Nonexistence of certain complete minimal surfaces with planar ends

.   In this paper we prove that two lines bounding an immersed minimal surface in a slab in R 3 homeomorphic to a compact Riemann surface minus two disks and a finite number of points must be parallel. This theorem is extended to a higher dimensional minimal hypersurface. Also it is proved that if the Gauss map of a complete embedded minimal surface of finite total curvature at a planar end has order two, then the intersection of the surface with the plane asymptotic to the planar end cannot admit a one-to-one orthogonal projection onto any line in the plane.