[Slide 1]: Good afternoon everyone.

Today I will be presenting the second half of

my project, namely the Geometric Measure Theory.
[Slide 2]: These are the topics which I have covered in my introductory talk the
last time round.
[Slide 3]: Here are the topic scope for today. First, I will explain the surface of
least area problem, something which I did not present well during the
introductory talk. From there, I will focus the main problem of this project,
namely the Plateaus Problem, which proves the existence of area minimizing
surfaces. Next we introduce the concepts of currents, the notions of mass, flat
norm and real flat norm. All of them are the buildup towards our discussion of the
Plateaus Problem. In addition, we will look at some useful results before stating
the Compactness Theorem and Closure Theorem.
[slide 4]: This slide summarizes the things which I have done in my entire thesis.
For today, we will mainly be looking these four parts. (point to the 4).
[slide 5]: Now, lets start off by considering this problem. (Given )
[slide 6]: An attempt to this problem is surfaces as mapping. Then we apply the
direct method.
[slide 7]: So what is the direct method? It is as such. (say the method) The idea is
similar to what we do in our real analysis on R.
[slide 8]: But there is a slight problem here. We are no longer dealing with just R
but surfaces, objects in higher dimension. So sequences of surfaces whose area
approaches the infimum with a certain boundary may converge to a singular
surface. (we will see an example later) So to overcome this difficulty, we need to
restrict to certain sequences. Here we adopt the concept of currents.
Why currents? They have well-defined notions of boundary and mass, which
allows us to prove the Plateaus Problem.
[slide 9]: Now we look at example why sequences of smooth surfaces whose area
approaches the infimum with a certain boundary may converge to a singular
space. (explain)
[slide 10]: This is our focus for this thesis.
[slide 11]: Here are some of the definitions of the terms frequently used in this
thesis. I will not go in depth into this. The only thing which I want to highlight is
that we only consider orientable rectifiable sets through the thesis. We do not
non-orientable ones because it is much more complicated and in some cases, it
may not agree with the solution of the Plateaus Problem.
[slide 12]: This slide just gives you an idea what currents are. Distribution here is
a class of linear functional which maps a set of test functionals onto the sets of
reals.
[slide 13]: This slide looks rather technical but this is only these are definitions
for spaces of currents.

[slide 14]: Next we have the definition for rectifiable currents. The definition is
long but essentially, they are currents associated with certain rectifiable sets,
with positive integer multiplicity and with compact support at x.
[slide 15]: Some examples of rectifiable currents include the Menger Sponge and
Koch Snowflake.
[slide 16]: More definitions on the different types of currents but for this project,
integral currents will be discussed more frequently. For completeness, I include
all the definition for the different types of integer-multiplicity currents.
[slide 17]: Here are some examples of integral and integral polyhedral chains.
[slide 18]: This slide summarizes all the types of integer-multiplicity currents. All
these follow directly from the definitions.
[slide 19]: Some extra remarks about currents. First, the boundary of a current is
always a dimensional lower than the current itself. An analogy could be a 2D
square with sides or boundary of 1D lines. Next, the boundary of a 0-dimensional
current is 0. Rather trivial but we still need to say this.
[slide 20]: Next we proceed to the definition of mass. The definition of mass is
the sup of T phi such that the sup with respect to x of the comass norm less than
or equal to 1. (say the concept out loud) or you can think of it as the weighted
area of a generalized surface.
[slide 21]: Next we have the flat norm. The definition is as such. Again the notion
of flat norm tells you how far apart two currents are.
[slide 22]: Example: freestyle
[slide 23]: Example: freestyle. Note that we are dealing with objects 1 dimension
higher. In general, we can go on and on for 4D, 5D, 6D. The idea is the same.
[slide 24]: More examples. We see that integral currents are always rectifiable
from our definitions and the summary we see just now. Is the converse true? Not
really. The next example is an counterexample. The idea is to construct an object
such that the current has a finite mass but its boundary has infinite mass.
[slide 25]: freestyle: describe iteration and how to calculate volume and area.
[slide 26]: So far, we have only been dealing with currents with integermultiplicity. For a generalized spaces of currents, we need to define a more
general flat norm, which is given by such.
[slide 27]: An example of generalized current is the normal current, which allows
real density and smoothing. (say that boundary of mass and mass of current is
finite or representable by integration)
[slide 28]: Example: mentioned that the boundary is representable by
integration.
[slide 29]: Again, for completeness, I include the definition for real flat chains,
real flat chains with finite mass and real polyhedral chains.
[slide 30]: To summarize everything about current, we have the following.

[slide 31]: freestyle. Also mentioned that the examples for normal current is also
not integral.
[slide 32]: This slide gives a few useful result for currents. First we have the mass
is lower semi continuous in the real flat norm on currents. So if we have the
given conditions, then (blah blah). This lemma is important as it will be used in
the Plateaus Problem and the Closure Theorem. The next proposition tells us
about the completeness of integral flat chains. We will not prove these two
results here.

[slide 33]: Now equipped with a decent amount of information, we can go back to
the Plateaus Problem. Remember we need the property of compactness in order
to carry out the direct method. Here is the theorem. (say out) There are two
things which we can derive from this theorem. First, in this set, we always have a
converging subsequence. Second, the limit is an integral current (that is its mass
and the boundary of its mass are finite). This is exactly what we want! Which is
to restrict to certain nice sequences of surfaces and NOT surfaces which will go
wild (singular). In my final oral presentation, we will see that the latter conclusion
actually comes directly from the Closure Theorem.
[slide 34]: Surprisingly, the proof is quite short. Hence, I will quickly run through.
The idea of the proof is similar to showing compactness in real analysis. Show
totally bounded and complete and they are the results of the corollary of
deformation theorem and closure theorem respectively.
If you remember the overview at the start of this talk, this is exactly the same
thing, just putting in words. For the proofs of these results, you can sit in my final
oral presentation and we will work on this together.
[slide 35]: Here, I will give you a glimpse of the Closure Theorem. I will elaborate
more in my final oral presentation.
[slide 36]: This will be the scope for my next presentation. Does anyone have any
questions for me? With that, I thank everyone for coming. Have a nice day.