Bi-quartic parametric polynomial minimal surfaces

Abstract: Minimal surfaces with isothermal parameters admitting B\'{e}zier representation were studied by Cosin and Monterde. They showed that, up to an affine transformation, the Enneper surface is the only bi-cubic isothermal minimal surface. Here we study bi-quartic isothermal minimal surfaces and establish the general form of their generating functions in the Weierstrass representation formula. We apply an approach proposed by Ganchev to compute the normal curvature and show that, in contrast to the bi-cubic case, there is a variety of bi-quartic isothermal minimal surfaces. Based on the Bezier representation we establish some geometric properties of the bi-quartic harmonic surfaces. Numerical experiments are visualized and presented to illustrate and support our results.