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Ahlfors-Weill Extensions for a Class of Minimal Surfaces

The Ahlfors-Weill extension of a conformal mapping of the disk is generalized to the lift of a harmonic mapping of the disk to a minimal surface, producing homeomorphic and quasiconformal extensions. The extension is obtained by a reflection across the boundary of the surface using a family of Euclidean circles orthogonal to the surface. This gives a geometric generalization of the Ahlfors-Weill formula and extends the minimal surface. Thus one obtains a homeomorphism of $\overline{\mathbb{C}}$ onto a toplological sphere in $\overline{\mathbb{R}^3} = \mathbb{R}^3 \cup \{\infty\}$ that is real-analytic off the boundary. The hypotheses involve bounds on a generalized Schwarzian derivative for harmonic mappings in term of the hyperbolic metric of the disk and the Gaussian curvature of the minimal surface. Hyperbolic convexity plays a crucial role.