• Communications of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.587-595
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• 2008

It is well known that critical points of the total scalar curvature functional S on the space of all smooth Riemannian structures of volume 1 on a compact manifold M are exactly the Einstein metrics. When the domain of S is restricted to the space of constant scalar curvature metrics, there has been a conjecture that a critical point is isometric to a standard sphere. In this paper we investigate the relationship between the first Betti number and stable minimal surfaces, and study the analytic properties of stable minimal surfaces in M for n = 3.