A martingale approach to minimal surfaces

We provide a probabilistic approach to studying minimal surfaces in R3. After a discussion of the basic relationship between Brownian motion on a surface and minimality of the surface, we introduce a way of coupling Brownian motions on two minimal surfaces. This coupling is then used to study two classes of results in minimal surface theory, maximum principle-type results, such as weak and strong halfspace theorems and the maximum principle at infinity, and Liouville theorems. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved