Table of Contents -- 0. Introduction -- I.A review of the Euler characteristic of a Palais-Smale vector field -- II. Analytical preliminaries -- the Sobelev spaces -- III. The global formulation of the problem of Plateau -- IV. The existence of a vector field associated to the Dirichlet functional E[sub(Ü)] -- V.A proof that the vector field X[sup(Ü)], associated to E[sub(Ü)], is Palais-Smale -- VI. The weak Riemannian structure on j[sub(Ü)] -- VII. The equivariance of X[sup(Ü)] under the action of the conformal group -- VIII. The regularity results for minimal surfaces
IX. The Fréchet derivative of the minimal surface vector field X and the surface fibre bundle -- X. The minimal surface vector field X is proper on bounded sets -- XI. Non-degenerate critical submanifolds of j[sub(Ü)] and a uniqueness theorem for minimal surfaces -- XII. The spray of the weak metric -- XIII. The transversality theorem -- XIV. The Morse number of minimal surfaces spanning a simple closed curve and its invarience under isotopy -- XV. References
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 118-121)
