Rigidity of area minimizing tori in 3-manifolds of nonnegative scalar curvature

Abstract

The following version of a conjecture of Fischer-Colbrie and Schoen is proved: If M is a complete Riemannian 3-manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature which contains a two-sided torus S which is of least area in its isotopy class then M is flat. This follows from a local version derived in the paper.