In the present paper we study geometric structures associated with webs of hypersurfaces. We prove that with any geodesic (n+2)-web on an n-dimensional manifold there is naturally associated a unique projective structure and, provided that one of web foliations is pointed, there is also associated a unique affine structure. The projective structure can be chosen by the claim that the leaves of all web foliations are totally geodesic, and the affine structure by an additional claim that one of web functions is affine.
These structures allow us to determine differential invariants of geodesic webs and give geometrically clear answers to some classical problems of the web theory such as the web linearization and the Gronwall theorem.
We find necessary and sufficient conditions for the foliation defined by level sets of a function f(x_{1},...,x_{n}) to be totally geodesic in a torsion-free connection and apply them to find the conditions for d-webs of hypersurfaces to be geodesic, and in the case of flat connections, for d-webs (d > n) of hypersurfaces to be hyperplanar webs. These conditions are systems of generalized Euler equations, and for flat connections we give an explicit construction of their solutions.
In this paper, we study the problem of finding a hypersurface family from a given spatial geodesic curve in R4. We obtain the parametric representation for a hypersurface family whose members have the same curve as a given geodesic curve. Using the Frenet frame of the given geodesic curve, we present the hypersurface as a linear combination of this frame and analyse the necessary and sufficient condition for that curve to be geodesic. We illustrate this method by presenting some examples.
We prove that any planar 4-web defines a unique projective structure in the plane in such a way that the leaves of the foliations are geodesics of this projective structure. We also find conditions for the projective structure mentioned above to contain an affine symmetric connection, and conditions for a planar 4-web to be equivalent to a geodesic 4-web on an affine symmetric surface. Similar results are obtained for planar d-webs, d > 4, provided that additional d-4 second-order invariants vanish.
We classify hypersurfaces of the Minkowski space $Ł^{n+1}$ that carry a totally geodesic foliation with complete leaves of codimension one. We prove that such a hypersurface is ruled, or a partial tube over a curve or contains a two or three dimensional strip. Moreover, if the hypersurface is embedded then it is a partial tube over a curve.
A Hopf hypersurface in a (para-)Kaehler manifold is a real hypersurface for which one of the principal directions of the second fundamental form is the (para-)complex dual of the normal vector. We consider particular Hopf hypersurfaces in the space of oriented geodesics of a non-flat space form of dimension greater than 2. For spherical and hyperbolic space forms, the oriented geodesic space admits a canonical Kaehler-Einstein and para-Kaehler-Einstein structure, respectively, so that a natural notion of a Hopf hypersurface exists. The particular hypersurfaces considered are formed by the orie…
We prove that a surface carries a hexagonal 3-web of geodesics if and only if the geodesic flow on the surface admits a cubic first integral and show that the system of partial differential equations, governing metrics on such surfaces, is integrable by generalized hodograph transform method. We present some new local examples of such metrics, discuss known ones, and establish an analogue of the celebrated Graf and Sauer Theorem for Darboux superintegrable metrics.
We classify totally geodesic submanifolds of Damek-Ricci spaces and show that they are either homogeneous (such submanifolds are known to be "smaller" Damek-Ricci spaces) or isometric to rank-one symmetric spaces of negative curvature. As a by-product, we obtain that a totally geodesic submanifold of any known harmonic manifold is by itself harmonic. We prove that the Cayley hyperbolic plane admits no Einstein hypersurfaces and that the only Einstein hypersurfaces in the Cayley projective plane are geodesic spheres of a particular radius; this completes the classification of Einstein hypersurf…
We classify the hypersurfaces of Euclidean space that carry a totally geodesic foliation with complete leaves of codimension one. In particular, we show that rotation hypersurfaces with complete profiles of codimension one are characterized by their warped product structure. The local version of the problem is also considered.
In this paper we give a complete local parametric classification of the hypersurfaces with dimension at least three of a space form that carry a totally geodesic foliation of codimension one. A classification under the assumption that the leaves of the foliation are complete was given in \cite{drt} for Euclidean hypersurfaces. We prove that there exists exactly one further class of local examples in Euclidean space, all of which have rank two. We also extend the classification under the global assumption of completeness of the leaves for hypersurfaces of the sphere and show that there exist pl…
The consideration of the so-called rotation minimizing frames allows for a simple and elegant characterization of plane and spherical curves in Euclidean space via a linear equation relating the coefficients that dictate the frame motion. In this work, we extend these investigations to characterize curves that lie on a geodesic sphere or totally geodesic hypersurface in a Riemannian manifold of constant curvature. Using that geodesic spherical curves are normal curves, i.e., they are the image of an Euclidean spherical curve under the exponential map, we are able to characterize geodesic spher…
We show that a simply connected Riemannian homogeneous space M which admits a totally geodesic hypersurface F is isometric to either (a) the Riemannian product of a space of constant curvature and a homogeneous space, or (b) the warped product of the Euclidean space and a homogeneous space, or (c) the twisted product of the line and a homogeneous space (with the warping/twisting function given explicitly). In the first case, F is also a Riemannian product; in the last two cases, it is a leaf of a totally geodesic homogeneous fibration. Case (c) can alternatively be characterised by the fact th…
We present a geometric interpretation of integrability of geodesic flow by quadratic integrals in terms of the web theory and construct integrable billiards on surfaces admitting such integrals.
We consider geodesic flows between hypersurfaces in $\R^n$. However, rather than consider using geodesics in $\R^n$, which are straight lines, we consider an induced flow using geodesics between the tangent spaces of the hypersurfaces viewed as affine hyperplanes. For naturality, we want the geodesic flow to be invariant under rigid transformations and homotheties. Consequently, we do not use the dual projective space, as the geodesic flow in this space is not preserved under translations. Instead we give an alternate approach using a Lorentzian space, which is semi-Riemannian with a metric of…
Given a globally hyperbolic spacetime endowed with a complete lightlike Killing vector field and a complete Cauchy hypersurface, we characterize the points which can be connected by geodesics. A straightforward consequence is the geodesic connectedness of globally hyperbolic generalized plane waves with a complete Cauchy hypersurface.
We describe natural Kähler or para-Kähler structures of the spaces of geodesics of pseudo-Riemannian space forms and relate the local geometry of hypersurfaces of space forms to that of their normal congruences, or Gauss maps, which are Lagrangian submanifolds. The space of geodesics L(S^{n+1}_{p,1}) of a pseudo-Riemannian space form S^{n+1}_{p,1} of non-vanishing curvature enjoys a Kähler or para-Kähler structure (J,G) which is in addition Einstein. Moreover, in the three-dimensional case, L(S^{n+1}_{p,1}) enjoys another Kähler or para-Kähler structure (J',G') which is scalar flat. The normal…
For a four-dimensional (nonisoclinicly geodesic) three-web W (3, 2, 2), a transversal distribution $Δ$ is defined by the torsion tensor of the web. In general, this distribution is not integrable. The authors find necessary and sufficient conditions of its integrability and prove the existence theorem for webs W (3, 2, 2) with integrable distributions $Δ$. They prove that for a web W (3, 2, 2) with the integrable distribution $Δ$, the integral surfaces $V^2$ of $Δ$ are totally geodesic in an affine connection of a certain bundle of affine connections. They also consider a class of webs W (3, 2…
In this paper we present the algorithms for calculating the differential geometric properties {t,n,b1,b2,b3,k1,k2,k3,k4} along-with geodesic curvature and geodesic torsion of the transversal intersection curve of four hypersurfaces (given by parametric representation) in Euclidean space R^5. In transversal intersection the normals of the surfaces at the intersection point are linearly independent, while as in nontransversal intersection the normals of the surfaces at the intersection point are linearly dependent.
We show that compact embedded starshaped $r$-convex hypersurfaces of certain warped products satisfying $H_r=aH+b$ with $a\geqslant 0$, $b>0$, where $H$ and $H_r$ are respectively the mean curvature and $r$-th mean curvature is a slice. In the case of space forms, we show that without the assumption of starshapedness, such Weingarten hypersurfaces are geodesic spheres. Finally, we prove that, in the case of space forms, if $Hr-aH-b$ is close to $0$ then the hypersurface is close to geodesic sphere for the Hausdorff distance. We also prove an anisotropic version of this stability result in the …
We construct examples of compact and one-ended constant mean curvature surfaces with large mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds with axial symmetry by gluing together small spheres positioned end-to-end along a geodesic. Such surfaces cannot exist in Euclidean space, but we show that the gradient of the ambient scalar curvature acts as a `friction term' which permits the usual analytic gluing construction to be carried out.
The authors study the geometry of lightlike hypersurfaces on a four-dimensional manifold $(M, c)$ endowed with a pseudoconformal structure $c = CO (2, 2)$. They prove that a lightlike hypersurface $V \subset (M, c)$ bears a foliation formed by conformally invariant isotropic geodesics and two isotropic distributions tangent to these geodesics, and that these two distributions are integrable if and only if $V$ is totally umbilical. The authors also indicate how, using singular points and singular submanifolds of a lightlike hypersurface $V \subset (M, c)$, to construct an invariant normalizatio…
We construct point invariants of ordinary differential equations that generalise the Cartan invariants of equations of order two and three. The vanishing of the invariants is equivalent to the existence of a totally geodesic paraconformal structure which consist of a paraconformal structure, an adapted $GL(2,\R)$-connection and a two-parameter family of totally geodesic hypersurfaces on the solution space. The structures coincide with the projective structures in dimension 2 and with the Einstein-Weyl structures of Lorentzian signature in dimension 3. We show that the totally geodesic paraconf…
Asymptotically geodesic hypersurfaces and the fundamental groups of hyperbolic manifolds
Fudan University（复旦大学）；Shanghai Institute for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (SIMIS)（上海数学与交叉学科研究院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
We prove an inequality for submanifolds of Cartan-Hadamard manifolds, which relates the geometry of a submanifold to the measure of the geodesics in the ambient space which it intersects. For hypersurfaces, this gives an extension of Banchoff and Pohl's isoperimetric inequality to spaces of non-positive curvature. We also prove a modified version of Croke's isoperimetric inequality for hypersurfaces immersed in Cartan-Hadamard manifolds and a sharp, quantitative version of an isoperimetric inequality of Yau in spaces of negative curvature. We discuss the relationship between these results, and…
Given a Riemannian manifold M and a hypersurface H in M, it is well known that infinitesimal convexity on a neighborhood of a point in H implies local convexity. We show in this note that the same result holds in a semi-Riemannian manifold. We make some remarks for the case when only timelike, null or spacelike geodesics are involved. The notion of geometric convexity is also reviewed and some applications to geodesic connectedness of an open subset of a Lorentzian manifold are given.
In this work, we study the geometric properties of spacelike foliations by hypersurfaces on a Lorentz manifold. We investigate conditions for the leaves being stable, totally geodesic or totally umbilical. We consider that $\overline{M}^{n+1}$ is equipped with a timelike closed conformal vector field $ξ$. If the foliation has constant mean curvature, we show that the leaves are stable. When the leaves are compact spacelike hypersurfaces we show that, under certain conditions, its are totally umbilic hypersurfaces. In the case of foliations by complete noncompact hypersurfaces, we using a Maxim…
In this article, we construct a new para-Kähler structure $({\mathcal G},{\mathcal J},Ω)$ in the space of oriented geodesics ${\mathbb L}(M)$ in a non-flat, real space form $M$. We first show that the para-Kähler metric ${\mathcal G}$ is scalar flat and when $M$ is a 3-dimensional real space form, ${\mathcal G}$ is locally conformally flat. Furthermore, we prove that the space of oriented geodesics in hyperbolic $n$-space, equipped with the constructed metric ${\mathcal G}$, is minimally isometric embedded in the tangent bundle of the hyperbolic $n$-space. We then study the submanifold theory,…
This paper gives a new characterization of geodesic spheres in the hyperbolic space in terms of a ``weighted'' higher order mean curvature. Precisely, we show that a compact hypersurface $Σ^{n-1}$ embedded in $\H^n$ with $VH_k$ being constant for some $k=1,\cdots,n-1$ is a centered geodesic sphere. Here $H_k$ is the $k$-th normalized mean curvature of $Σ$ induced from $\H^n$ and $V=\cosh r$, where $r$ is a hyperbolic distance to a fixed point in $\H^n$. Moreover, this result can be generalized to a compact hypersurface $Σ$ embedded in $\H^n$ with the ratio $V\left(\frac{H_k}{H_j}\right)\equiv\…
We present a projectively invariant description of planar linear 3-webs. For a non-hexagonal 3-web, we introduce family of projective torsion-free Cartan connections, the web leaves being geodesics for each member of the family, and give a web linearization criterion. Finally, we propose an algorithm for resolving the Gronwall conjecture and illustrate this approach by proving the conjecture for 3-webs whose 2 foliations are 2 pencils of lines.
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.
We consider real isotropic geodesics on manifolds endowed with a pseudoconformal structure and their applications to the theory of lightlike hypersurfaces on such manifolds, the geometry of four-dimensional conformal structures of Lorentzian type, and a classification of the Einstein spaces.
Using generalized Tanaka-Webster connection, we considered a real hypersurface $M$ in a complex two-plane Grassmannian $G_2({\mathbb C}^{m+2})$ when the GTW Reeb Lie derivative of the structure Jacobi operator coincides with the Reeb Lie derivative. Next using the method of simultaneous diagonalization, we prove a complete classification for a real hypersurface in $G_2({\mathbb C}^{m+2})$ satisfying such a condition. In this case, we have proved that $M$ is an open part of a tube around a totally geodesic $G_2({\mathbb C}^{m+1})$ in $G_2({\mathbb C}^{m+2})$.
In this paper we study the main geometric properties of the Carnot-Carathéodory (abbreviated CC) distance $\dc$ in the setting of $k$-step sub-Riemannian Carnot groups from many different points of view. An extensive study of the so-called normal CC-geodesics is given. We state and prove some related variational formulae and we find suitable Jacobi-type equations for normal CC-geodesics. One of our main results is a sub-Riemannian version of the Gauss Lemma. We show the existence of the metric normal for smooth non-characteristic hypersurfaces. We also compute the sub-Riemannian exponential ma…
It is known that a tube over a Kahler submanifold in a complex form is a Hopf hypersurface. In some sense the reverse statement is true: a connected compact generic immersed C^(2n-1) regular Hopf hypersurface in the complex projective plane is a tube iver an irreducible algebraic variety. In the complex hyperbolic space a connected compact generic immersed C^(2n-1) regular Hopf hypersurface is a geodesic hypersphere
In this paper we consider on a complete Riemannian manifold $M$ an immersed totally geodesic hypersurface $\Si$ existing together with an immersed submanifold $N$ without focal points. No curvature condition is needed. We obtained several connectedness results relating the topologies of $M$ and $\Si$ which depend on the codimension of $N$.
Let $M$ be a real hypersurface in complex projective space. The almost contact metric structure on $M$ allows us to consider, for any nonnull real number $k$, the corresponding $k$-th generalized Tanaka-Webster connection on $M$ and, associated to it, a differential operator of first order of Lie type. Considering such a differential operator and Lie derivative we define, from the structure Jacobi operator $R_ξ$ on $M$ a tensor field of type (1,2), $R_{ξ_T}^{(k)}$. We obtain some classifications of real hypersurfaces for which $R_{ξ_T}^{(k)}$ is either symmetric or skew symmetric.
While studying the existence of closed geodesics and minimal hypersurfaces in compact manifolds, the concept of width was introduced in different contexts. Generally, the width is realized by the energy of the closed geodesics or the volume of minimal hypersurfaces, which are found by the Minimax argument. Recently, Marques and Neves used the $p$-width to prove the existence of infinite many minimal hypersurfaces in compact manifolds with positive Ricci curvature. However, whether the $p$-width can be realized as the volume of minimal hypersurfaces is not known yet. We introduced the concept o…
