Catenoid estimate and its geometric applications

The min-max theory developed in the 80s by Almgren-Pitts allows one to run Morse theory with the area functional on the space of hypersurfaces in a manifold to construct minimal surfaces in great generality. The challenge is to understand the geometry of the minimal surfaces produced this way. I will describe joint work with F.C. Marques and A. Neves where we use a sharp area estimate for catenoids to control the geometry in several settings.