Tapia, Victor The role of minimal surfaces in the physics of elementary particles. (English) Zbl 0746.53063 Topics in mathematical analysis, Vol. Dedicated Mem. of A. L. Cauchy, Ser. Pure Math. 11, 863-877 (1989). [For the entire collection see Zbl 0721.00014.]“We look at the role of minimal surfaces in the physics of elementary particles. In order to motivate its introduction we start with an elementary review of the standard model and its problems. An important concept is that of gauge symmetry group on which we base most of our discussion. A brief introduction to strings is presented, emphasizing the role played by minimal surfaces. We discuss the role of gauge fixing and introduce a new gauge fixing which turns to be a covariant generalization of the harmonic one.”. Reviewer: R.Finn (Stanford) MSC: 53Z05 Applications of differential geometry to physics 81T30 String and superstring theories; other extended objects (e.g., branes) in quantum field theory 53A10 Minimal surfaces in differential geometry, surfaces with prescribed mean curvature Keywords:gauge symmetry group; strings Biographic References: Cauchy, A. L. Citations:Zbl 0721.00014 PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{V. Tapia}, in: Analytic and Gevrey regularity for linear partial differential operators. . 863--877 (1989; Zbl 0746.53063)