On the stability of minimal immersions into Finsler manifolds

In this paper, we derive the second variation formulas of volume for minimal immersions into Finsler manifolds and apply them to study the stability of minimal submanifolds. Then we prove that all minimal graphs in Minkowski (n+1)(n+1)-space are stable. Furthermore, we obtain a Bernstein type theorem in Minkowski (n+1)(n+1)-space by improving Bernstein type theorems in Euclidean space and give an example of unstable minimal surface in Minkowski 3-space.