Biharmonic Maps and Laguerre Minimal Surfaces

Abstract

A Laguerre surface is known to be minimal if and only if its corresponding isotropic map is biharmonic. For every Laguerre surfaceΦis its associated surfaceΨ=1+u2Φ, whereulies in the unit disk. In this paper, the projection of the surfaceΨassociated to a Laguerre minimal surface is shown to be biharmonic. A complete characterization ofΨis obtained under the assumption that the corresponding isotropic map of the Laguerre minimal surface is harmonic. A sufficient and necessary condition is also derived forΨto be a graph. Estimates of the Gaussian curvature to the Laguerre minimal surface are obtained, and several illustrative examples are given.