Existence of hypersurfaces with prescribed mean curvature I – generic min-max

Abstract

We prove that, for a generic set of smooth prescription functions $h$ on a closed ambient manifold, there always exists a nontrivial, smooth, closed hypersurface of prescribed mean curvature $h$. The solution is either an embedded minimal hypersurface with integer multiplicity, or a non-minimal almost embedded hypersurface of multiplicity one. More precisely, we show that our previous min-max theory, developed for constant mean curvature hypersurfaces, can be extended to construct min-max prescribed mean curvature hypersurfaces for certain classes of prescription function, including smooth Morse functions and nonzero analytic functions. In particular we do not need to assume that $h$ has a sign.