We extend to the conformal realm the concept of genuine deformations of submanifolds, introduced by Dajczer and the first author for the isometric case. Analogously to that case, we call a conformal deformation of a submanifold $M^n$ genuine if no open subset of $M^n$ can be included as a submanifold of a higher dimensional conformally deformable submanifold in such a way that the conformal deformation of the former is induced by a conformal deformation of the latter. We describe the geometric structure of a submanifold that admits a genuine conformal deformation and give several applications showing the unifying character of this concept.
A basic question in submanifold theory is whether a given isometric immersion $f\colon M^n\to\R^{n+p}$ of a Riemannian manifold of dimension $n\geq 3$ into Euclidean space with low codimension $p$ admits, locally or globally, a genuine infinitesimal bending. That is, if there exists a genuine smooth variation of $f$ by immersions that are isometric up to the first order. Until now only the hypersurface case $p=1$ was well understood. We show that a strong necessary local condition to admit such a bending is the submanifold to be ruled and give a lower bound for the dimension of the rulings. In…
Concerning the problem of classifying complete submanifolds of Euclidean space with codimension two admitting genuine isometric deformations, until now the only known examples with the maximal possible rank four are the real Kaehler minimal submanifolds classified by Dajczer-Gromoll \cite{dg3} in parametric form. These submanifolds behave like minimal surfaces, namely, if simple connected either they admit a nontrivial one-parameter associated family of isometric deformations or are holomorphic. In this paper, we characterize a new class of complete minimal genuinely deformable Euclidean subma…
Local and global conformal invariants of submanifolds
Penn State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；Wichita State University（威奇托州立大学）；University of Notre Dame（圣母大学）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）
In the present paper first, we define the conformal Sasakian manifolds and then we study geometry of invariant, anti-invariant and CR-submanifolds of conformal Sasakian manifolds.
First, we prove that indefinite Sasakian manifolds do not admit any screen conformal $r$-null submanifolds, tangent to the structure vector field. We, therefore, define a special class of null submanifolds, called; {\it contact screen conformal} $r$-null submanifold of indefinite Sasakian manifolds. Several characterization results, on the above class of null submanifolds, are proved. In particular, we prove that such null submanifolds exist in indefinite Sasakian space forms of constant holomorphic sectional curvatures of $-3$.
This paper belongs to the realm of conformal geometry and deals with Euclidean submanifolds that admit smooth variations that are infinitesimally conformal. Conformal variations of Euclidean submanifolds is a classical subject in differential geometry. In fact, already in 1917 Cartan classified parametrically the Euclidean hypersurfaces that admit nontrivial conformal variations. Our first main result is a Fundamental theorem for conformal infinitesimal variations. The second is a rigidity theorem for Euclidean submanifolds that lie in low codimension.
It was proved by Graham and Witten in 1999 that conformal invariants of submanifolds can be obtained via volume renormalization of minimal surfaces in conformally compact Einstein manifolds. The conformal invariant of a submanifold $Σ$ is contained in the volume expansion of the minimal surface which is asymptotic to $Σ$ when the minimal surface approaches the conformaly infinity. In the paper we give the explicit expression of Graham-Witten's conformal invariant for closed four dimensional submanifolds and find critical points of the conformal invariant in the case of Euclidean ambient spaces…
In Part I, we develop the notions of a Moebius structure and a conformal Cartan geometry, establish an equivalence between them; we use them in Part II to study submanifolds of conformal manifolds in arbitrary dimension and codimension. We obtain Gauss-Codazzi-Ricci equations and a conformal Bonnet theorem characterizing immersed submanifolds of the conformal n-sphere. These methods are applied in Part III to study constrained Willmore surfaces, isothermic surfaces, Guichard surfaces and conformally-flat submanifolds with flat normal bundle, and their spectral deformations, in arbitrary codime…
A conformal structure on a manifold $M^n$ induces natural second order conformally invariant operators, called Möbius and Laplace structures, acting on specific weight bundles of $M$, provided that $n\ge 3$. By extending the notions of Möbius and Laplace structures to the case of surfaces and curves, we develop here the theory of extrinsic conformal geometry for submanifolds, find tensorial invariants of a conformal embedding, and use these invariants to characterize various forms of geodesic submanifolds.
The purpose of the present paper is to study the differential geometric properties of a quaternion CR-submanifold in a locally conformal quaternion Kaehler manifold.
In this paper we present not only some properties related to bi-warped product submanifolds of locally conformal almost cosymplectic manifolds, but also we show how the squared norm of the second fundamental form and the bi-warped product's warping functions are related when the bi-warped product submanifold has a proper slant submanifold as a base or fiber.
The position vector field x is the most elementary and natural geometric object on a Euclidean submanifold $M$. The position vector field plays very important roles in mathematics as well as in physics. Similarly, the tangential component x^T of the position vector field is the most natural vector field tangent to the Euclidean submanifold $M$. We simply call the vector field x^T the \textit{canonical vector field} of the Euclidean submanifold M. In earlier articles, we investigated Euclidean submanifolds whose canonical vector fields are concurrent, concircular, or torse-forming. In this arti…
For every codimension two spacelike submanifold of a Lorentz manifold and each choice of a normal lightlike vector field, we introduce a canonical way to construct a tractor conformal bundle. We characterize when the induced connection of a such submanifold defines a tractor connection and then, in this case, when this tractor conformal bundle with the induced connection is standard for the induced metric. Finally, the normality condition for this tractor conformal bundle endowed with the induced connection is characterized in terms of a strong relationship between the intrinsic and the extrin…
In this paper, we give the Cartan's formula for half-lightlike submanifolds of Lorentzian manifolds and use it to show that a screen homothetic half-lightlike submanifolds of a Lorentzian space form, with a conformal co-screen distribution are locally a lightlike triple product manifolds. Then we give a classification theorem for half-lightlike submanifolds of Lorentzian space form with constant screen principal curvatures. These results extend some results obtained in the case of lightlike hypersurfaces of Lorentzian manifolds ([1]).
Let $f\colon M^{2n}\to\mathbb{R}^{2n+\ell}$, $n \geq 5$, denote a conformal immersion into Euclidean space with codimension $\ell$ of a Kaehler manifold of complex dimension $n$ and free of flat points. For codimensions $\ell=1,2$ we show that such a submanifold can always be locally obtained in a rather simple way, namely, from an isometric immersion of the Kaehler manifold $M^{2n}$ into either $\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}$ or $\mathbb{R}^{2n+2}$, the latter being a class of submanifolds already extensively studied.
We extend the concept of genuine rigidity of submanifolds by allowing mild singularities, mainly to obtain new global rigidity results and unify the known ones. As one of the consequences, we simultaneously extend and unify Sacksteder and Dajczer-Gromoll theorems by showing that any compact $n$-dimensional submanifold of ${\mathbb R}^{n+p}$ is singularly genuinely rigid in ${\mathbb R}^{n+q}$, for any $q < \min\{5,n\} - p$. Unexpectedly, the singular theory becomes much simpler and natural than the regular one, even though all technical codimension assumptions, needed in the regular case, are …
The goal of the present paper is to investigate the algebraic structure of global conformal invariants of submanifolds. These are defined to be conformally invariant integrals of geometric scalars of the tangent and normal bundle. A famous example of a global conformal invariant is the Willmore energy of a surface. In codimension one we classify such invariants, showing that under a structural hypothesis (more precisely we assume the integrand depends separately on the intrinsic and extrinsic curvatures, and not on their derivatives) the integrand can only consist of an intrinsic scalar confor…
There is a Lorenzian group acting on the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_p$. We study the regular submanifolds in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_p$ and construct general submanifold theory in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_p$. Finally we give the first variation formula of the Willmore volume functional of submanifolds in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_p$ and classify the conformal isotropic submanifolds in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_p$.
Rigidity of Lagrangian submanifolds with conformal Maslov form and Legendrian capillary boundary
Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture（北京建筑大学）；Chongqing University of Technology（重庆理工大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Xinyang Normal University（信阳师范大学）
In this paper we classify Euclidean hypersurfaces $f\colon M^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with a principal curvature of multiplicity $n-2$ that admit a genuine conformal deformation $\tilde{f}\colon M^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+2}$. That $\tilde{f}\colon M^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+2}$ is a genuine conformal deformation of $f$ means that it is a conformal immersion for which there exists no open subset $U \subset M^n$ such that the restriction $\tilde{f}|_U$ is a composition $\tilde f|_U=h\circ f|_U$ of $f|_U$ with a conformal immersion $h\colon V\to \mathbb{R}^{n+2}$ of an open subset $…
In [2] we have classified the Blaschke quasi-umbilical submanifolds in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_s$. In this paper we shall classify the Blaschke para-umbilical hypersurfaces in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_s$. That may be also considered as the extension of the classification of the conformal isotropic submanifolds in the conformal space ${\mathbb Q}^n_s$.
We study the problem posed by F. Burstall of developing a theory of isothermic Euclidean submanifolds of dimension greater than or equal to three. As a natural extension of the definition in the surface case, we call a Euclidean submanifold {\it isothermic} if it is locally the image of a conformal immersion of a Riemannian product of Riemannian manifolds whose second fundamental form is adapted to the product net of the manifold. Our main result is a complete classification of all such conformal immersions of Riemannian products of dimension greater than or equal to three. We derive several c…
In this paper, we study submanifolds with constant $r$th mean curvature $S_r$. We investigate, the stability of such submanifolds in the case when they are leaves of a codimension one foliation. We also generalize recent results by Barros - Sousa and Alías - Colares, concerning conformal fields, to an arbitrary manifold. Using this we show that normal component of a Killing field is a $r$th Jacobi field of a submanifold with $S_{r+1}$ constant. Finally, we study relations between $r$th Jacobi fields and vector fields preserving a foliation.
A theorem of Lawson and Simons states that the only stable minimal submanifolds in complex projective spaces are complex submanifolds. We generalize their result to the cases of quaternionic and octonionic projective spaces. Our approach gives a unified viewpoint towards conformal and projective geometries.
Wintgen ideal submanifolds in space forms are those ones attaining equality pointwise in the so-called DDVV inequality which relates the scalar curvature, the mean curvature and the scalar normal curvature. They are Moebius invariant objects. The mean curvature sphere defines a conformal Gauss map into a Grassmann manifold. We show that any Wintgen ideal submanifold has a Riemannian submersion structure over a Riemann surface with the fibers being round spheres. Then the conformal Gauss map is shown to be a super-conformal and harmonic map from the underlying Riemann surface. Some of our previ…
In this paper, we introduce and study the conformal mean curvature flow of submanifolds of higher codimension in the Euclidean space $\bbr^n$. This kind of flow is a special case of a general modified mean curvature flow which is of various origination. As the main result, we prove a blow-up theorem concluding that, under the conformal mean curvature flow in $\bbr^n$, the maximum of the square norm of the second fundamental form of any compact submanifold tends to infinity in finite time. Furthermore, by using the idea of Andrews and Baker for studying the mean curvature flow of submanifolds i…
Degenerate submanifolds of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds are quite difficult to study because there is no prefered connection when the submanifold is not totally geodesic. For the particular case of degenerate totally umbilical hypersurfaces, we show that there are "Weyl" connections adapted to the induced structure on the hypersurface. We begin the study of these with their holonomy.
In this paper, we study deformations of coisotropic submanifolds in a locally conformal symplectic manifold. Firstly, we derive the equation that governs $C^\infty$ deformations of coisotropic submanifolds and define the corresponding $C^\infty$-moduli space of coisotropic submanifolds modulo the Hamiltonian isotopies. Secondly, we prove that the formal deformation problem is governed by an $L_\infty$-structure which is a $\frak b$-deformation of strong homotopy Lie algebroids introduced in Oh and Park (2005) in the symplectic context. Then we study deformations of locally conformal symplectic…
The connected components of the zero set of any conformal vector field $v$, in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ of arbitrary signature, are of two types, which may be called `essential' and `nonessential'. The former consist of points at which $v$ is essential, that is, cannot be turned into a Killing field by a local conformal change of the metric. In a component of the latter type, points at which $v$ is nonessential form a relatively-open dense subset that is at the same time a totally umbilical submanifold of $(M,g)$. An essential component is always a null totally geodesic submanifold…
We extend the classical theory of isothermic surfaces in conformal 3-space, due to Bour, Christoffel, Darboux, Bianchi and others, to the more general context of submanifolds of symmetric $R$-spaces with essentially no loss of integrable structure.
The Willmore energy, alias bending energy or rigid string action, and its variation-the Willmore invariant-are important surface conformal invariants with applications ranging from cell membranes to the entanglement entropy in quantum gravity. In work of Andersson, Chrusciel, and Friedrich, the same invariant arises as the obstruction to smooth boundary asymptotics to the Yamabe problem of finding a metric in a conformal class with constant scalar curvature. We use conformal geometry tools to describe and compute the asymptotics of the Yamabe problem on a conformally compact manifold and thus …
The purpose of this work is to close the local deformation problem of rank two Euclidean submanifolds in codimension two by describing their moduli space of deformations. In the process, we provide an explicit simple representation of these submanifolds, a result of independent interest by its applications. We also determine which deformations are genuine and honest, allowing us to find the first known examples of honestly locally deformable rank two submanifolds in codimension two. In addition, we study which of these submanifolds admit isometric immersions as Euclidean hypersurfaces, a prope…
We introduce a class of minimal submanfolds $M^n$, $n\geq 3$, in spheres $\mathbb{S}^{n+2}$ that are ruled by totally geodesic spheres of dimension $n-2$. If simply-connected, such a submanifold admits a one-parameter associated family of equally ruled minimal isometric deformations that are genuine. As for compact examples, there are plenty of them but only for dimensions $n=3$ and $n=4$. In the first case, we have that $M^3$ must be a $\mathbb{S}^1$-bundle over a minimal torus $T^2$ in $\mathbb{S}^5$ and in the second case $M^4$ has to be a $\mathbb{S}^2$-bundle over a minimal sphere $\mathb…
Sbrana and Cartan gave local classifications for the set of Euclidean hypersurfaces $M^n\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ which admit another genuine isometric immersions in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ for $n\geq 3$. The main goal of this paper is to extend their classification to higher codimensions. Our main result is a complete description of the moduli space of genuine deformations of generic hypersurfaces of rank $(p+1)$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n+p}$ for $p\leq n-2$. As a consequence, we obtain an analogous classification to the ones given by Sbrana and Cartan providing all local isometric immersions in $\mathbb…
The connected components of the zero set of any conformal vector field, in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of arbitrary signature, are shown to be totally umbilical conifold varieties, that is, smooth submanifolds except possibly for some quadric singularities. The singularities occur only when the metric is indefinite, including the Lorentzian case. This generalizes an analogous result in the Riemannian case, due to Belgun, Moroianu and Ornea (2010).
We first partially extend a theorem of Topping, on the relation between mean curvature and intrinsic diameter, from immersed submanifolds of $\mathbb{R} ^{n} $ to almost everywhere immersed, closed submanifolds of a compact Riemannian manifold. We use this to prove quantization of energy for pseudo-holomorphic closed curves, of all genus, in a compact locally conformally symplectic manifold.
Inspired by the concepts of slant distribution and slant submanifold, with their variants of hemi-slant, semi-slant, bi-slant, or almost bi-slant, we introduce the more general concepts of $k$-slant distribution and $k$-slant submanifold in the settings of an almost Hermitian, an almost product Riemannian, an almost contact metric, and an almost paracontact metric manifold and study some of their properties. We prove that, for any proper $k$-slant distribution in the tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold, there exists another one in its orthogonal complement, and we establish basic relations…
In this thesis, we study the deformation problem of coisotropic submanifolds in Jacobi manifolds. In particular we attach two algebraic invariants to any coisotropic submanifold $S$ in a Jacobi manifold, namely the $L_\infty[1]$-algebra and the BFV-complex of $S$. Our construction generalizes and unifies analogous constructions in symplectic, Poisson, and locally conformal symplectic geometry. As a new special case we also attach an $L_\infty[1]$-algebra and a BFV-complex to any coisotropic submanifold in a contact manifold. The $L_\infty[1]$-algebra of $S$ controls the formal coisotropic defo…
In this paper, we attach an $L_\infty$-algebra to any coisotropic submanifold in a Jacobi manifold. Our construction generalizes and unifies analogous constructions by Oh-Park (symplectic case), Cattaneo-Felder (Poisson case), Lê-Oh (locally conformal symplectic case). As a new special case, we attach an $L_\infty$-algebra to any coisotropic submanifold in a contact manifold. The $L_\infty$-algebra of a coisotropic submanifold $S$ governs the (formal) deformation problem of $S$.
We consider the equivalence problem for symplectic and conformal symplectic group actions on submanifolds and functions of symplectic and contact linear spaces. This is solved by computing differential invariants via the Lie-Tresse theorem.
