On the Existence and Regularity of Mass-Minimizing Currents with an Elastic Boundary

We study the following variational problem. For a compact manifold S₀ embedded in the Euclidean space we consider deformations of S₀. They are represented by Lipschitz continuous homeomorphisms of S₀ whose images are embedded manifolds. We introduce an energy of a deformation which depends on the first derivative of the curvature of (S₀) and the mass of a mass minimizing current which is bounded by (S₀). In this paper it is shown that an energy minimizing deformation of (S₀) exists. Moreover, in the case that S₀ has codimension 1, (S₀) is an embedded C^3a -submanifold, if is of the class C^2,1.