Existence and non-existence of minimal graphs (1701.01674v2)

Abstract: We study the Dirichlet problem for minimal surface systems in arbitrary dimension and codimension via mean curvature flow, and obtain the existence of minimal graphs over arbitrary mean convex bounded $C^2$ domains for a large class of prescribed boundary data. This result can be seen as a natural generalization of the classical sharp criterion for solvability of the minimal surface equation by Jenkins-Serrin. In contrast, we also construct a class of prescribed boundary data on just mean convex domains for which the Dirichlet problem in codimension 2 is not solvable. Moreover, we study existence and the uniqueness of minimal graphs by perturbation.