On free boundary minimal surfaces in the Riemannian Schwarzschild manifold

Abstract: Is it possible to obtain unbounded minimal surfaces in certain asymptotically flat 3-manifolds as a limit of solutions to a natural mountain pass problem with diverging boundaries? In this work, we give evidence that this might be true by analyzing related aspects in the case of the exact Riemannian Schwarzschild manifold. More precisely, we observe that the simplest minimal surface in this space has Morse index one. We prove also a relationship between the length of the boundary and the density at infinity of general minimal surfaces satisfying a free-boundary condition along the horizon.