Structure of one-phase free boundaries in the plane

We study classical solutions to the one-phase free boundary problem in which the free boundary consists of smooth curves and the components of the positive phase are simply-connected. We show that if two components of the free boundary are close, then the solution locally resembles an entire solution discovered by Hauswirth, H'elein and Pacard, whose free boundary has the shape of a double hairpin. Our results are analogous to theorems of Colding and Minicozzi characterizing embedded minimal annuli, and a direct connection between our theorems and theirs can be made using a correspondence due to Traizet.