Rigidity of min-max minimal spheres in three-manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we consider min-max minimal surfaces in three-manifolds and prove some rigidity results. For instance, we prove that any metric on a three-sphere which has scalar curvature greater than or equal to $6$ and is not round must have an embedded minimal sphere of area strictly smaller than $4\pi$ and index at most one. If the Ricci curvature is positive we also prove sharp estimates for the width.