Constant mean curvature surfaces in 3-dimensional Thurston geometries

This is a survey on the global theory of constant mean curvature surfaces in Riemannian homogeneous 3-manifolds. These ambient 3-manifolds include the eight canonical Thurston 3-dimensional geometries, i.e. R3, H3, S3, H2 \times R, S2 \times R, the Heisenberg space Nil3, the universal cover of PSL2(R) and the Lie group Sol3. We will focus on the problems of classifying compact CMC surfaces and entire CMC graphs in these spaces. A collection of important open problems of the theory is also presented

Harmonic maps and constant mean curvature surfaces in \H^2 \times \R

We introduce a hyperbolic Gauss map into the Poincare disk for any surface in H^2xR with regular vertical projection, and prove that if the surface has constant mean curvature H=1/2, this hyperbolic Gauss map is harmonic. Conversely, we show that every nowhere holomorphic harmonic map from an open simply connected Riemann surface into the Poincare disk is the hyperbolic Gauss map of a two-parameter family of such surfaces. As an application we obtain that any holomorphic quadratic differential on the surface can be realized as the Abresch-Rosenberg holomorphic differential of some, and generically infinitely many, complete surfaces with H=1/2 in H^2xR. A similar result applies to minimal surfaces in the Heisenberg group Nil_3. Finally, we classify all complete minimal vertical graphs in H^2xR.Comment: 37 pages, 1 figur

A characterization of constant mean curvature surfaces in homogeneous 3-manifolds

It has been recently shown by Abresch and Rosenberg that a certain Hopf differential is holomorphic on every constant mean curvature surface in a Riemannian homogeneous 3-manifold with isometry group of dimension 4. In this paper we describe all the surfaces with holomorphic Hopf differential in the homogeneous 3-manifolds isometric to H^2xR or having isometry group isomorphic either to the one of the universal cover of PSL(2,R), or to the one of a certain class of Berger spheres. It turns out that, except for the case of these Berger spheres, there exist some exceptional surfaces with holomorphic Hopf differential and non-constant mean curvature.Comment: corrected typo