Existence and Regularity for a Curvature Dependent Variational Problem

It is proved that smooth closed curves of given length minimizing the principal eigenvalue of the Schrödinger operator $-\frac{d^2}{ds^2}+κ^2$ exist. Here $s$ denotes the arclength and $κ$ the curvature. These minimizers are automatically planar, analytic, convex curves. The straight segment, traversed back and forth, is the only possible exception that becomes admissible in a more generalized setting. In proving this, we overcome the difficulty from a lack of coercivity and compactness by a combination of methods.

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