Download or read book Two-Dimensional Geometric Variational Problems written by Jürgen Jost and published by . This book was released on 1991-03-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph treats variational problems for mappings from a surface equipped with a conformal structure into Euclidean space or a Riemannian manifold. Presents a general theory of such variational problems, proving existence and regularity theorems with particular conceptual emphasis on the geometric aspects of the theory and thorough investigation of the connections with complex analysis. Among the topics covered are: Plateau's problem, the regularity theory of solutions, a variational approach for obtaining various conformal representation theorems, a general existence theorem for harmonic mappings, and a new approach to Teichmuller theory via harmonic maps.