We study sequences $f_k:Σ_k \to \R^n$ of conformally immersed, compact Riemann surfaces with fixed genus and Willmore energy ${\cal W}(f) \leq Λ$. Assume that $Σ_k$ converges to $Σ$ in moduli space, i.e. $ϕ_k^\ast(Σ_k) \to Σ$ as complex structures for diffeomorphisms $ϕ_k$. Then we construct a branched conformal immersion $f:Σ\to \R^n$ and Möbius transformations $σ_k$, such that for a subsequence $σ_k \circ f_k \circ ϕ_k \to f$ weakly in $W^{2,2}_{loc}$ away from finitely many points. For $Λ< 8π$ the map $f$ is unbranched. If the $Σ_k$ diverge in moduli space, then we show $\liminf_{k \to \infty} {\cal W}(f_k) \geq \min(8π,ω^n_p)$. Our work generalizes results in \cite{K-S3} to arbitrary codimension.
Motivated by the beautiful theory and the rich applications of harmonic conformal immersions and conformal immersions of constant mean curvature (CMC) surfaces, we study biharmonic conformal immersions of surfaces into a generic 3-manifold. We first derive an invariant equation for such immersions, we then try to answer the question, "what surfaces can be biharmonically conformally immersed into Euclidean 3-space?" We prove that a circular cylinder is the only CMC surface that can be biharmonically conformally immersed into a Euclidean 3-space; We obtain a classification of biharmonic conforma…
In this paper, we determine all conformal minimal immersions of 2-spheres in complex Grassmann manifold $G(2,N; \mathbb{C})$ with parallel second fundamental form.
We proved that a conformal immersion of $M_0^{n_0}\times M_1^{n_1}$ as an hipersurface in a Euclidean space must be an extrinsic product of immersions, under the assumption that $n_0, n_1 \geq 2$ and that $M^{n_0}_0\times M^{n_1}_1$ is not conformally flat. We also stated a similar theorem for an arbitrary number of factors, more precisely, a conformal immersion $f\colon M^{n_0}_0 \times \cdots \times M^{n_k}_k \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+k}$ must be an extrinsic product of immersions if one of the factors admits a plane with vanishing curvature and the remaining factors are not flat.
We prove the existence of (branched) conformal immersions F: S^2 -> R^3 with mean curvature H > 0 arbitrarily prescribed up to a 3-dimensional affine indeterminacy. A similar result is proved for the space forms S^3, H^3 and partial results for surfaces of higher genus.
In this note, we give natural extensions to cylinders and tori of a classical result due to T. Takahashi about minimal immersions into spheres. More precisely, we deal with Euclidean isometric immersions whose projections in R^N satisfy a spectral condition of their Laplacian.
We introduce a family of variational functionals for spinor fields on a compact Riemann surface $M$ that can be used to find close-to-conformal immersions of $M$ into $\mathbb{R}^3$ in a prescribed regular homotopy class. Numerical experiments indicate that, by taking suitable limits, minimization of these functionals can also yield piecewise smooth isometric immersions of a prescribed Riemannian metric on $M$.
In this paper, we study biharmonic isometric immersions of a surface into and biharmonic Riemannian submersion from 3-dimensional Berger spheres. We obtain a classification of proper biharmonic isometric immersions of a surface with constant mean curvature into Berger 3-spheres. We also give a complete classification of proper biharmonic Hopf tori in Berger 3-sphere. For Riemannian submersions, we prove that a Riemannian submersion from Berger 3-spheres into a surface is biharmonic if and only if it is harmonic.
Several characterizations of umbilic points of submanifolds in arbitrary Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds are given. As a consequence, we obtain new characterizations of spheres in the Euclidean space and of hyperbolic spaces in the Lorentz-Minkowski space. We also prove the Lorentzian version of a classical result by Cartan.
In this paper, we firstly extend Theorem 5.1.1 in \cite {Helein} due to Hélein to a rescaled branched conformal immersed sequence(c.f. Theorem 1.5). By virtue of this local convergence theorem, we study the blowup behavior of a sequence of branched conformal immersions of closed Riemannian surface in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ with uniformly bounded areas and Willmore energies. Furthermore, we prove that the integral identity of Gauss curvature is true.
Geometry of conformal minimal two-spheres immersed in $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$ is studied in this paper by harmonic maps. We construct a non-homogeneous constant curved minimal two-sphere in $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$, and give a classification theorem of linearly full conformal minimal immersions of constant curvature from $S^2$ to $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$, or equivalently, a complex hyperquadric $Q_{4}$, which illustrates minimal two-spheres of constant curvature in $Q_{4}$ are in general not congruent.
We study biminimal immersions, that is immersions which are critical points of the bienergy for normal variations with fixed energy. We give a geometrical description of the Euler-Lagrange equation associated to biminimal immersions for: i) biminimal curves in a Riemannian manifold, with particular care to the case of curves in a space form ii) isometric immersions of codimension one in a Riemannian manifold, in particular for surfaces of a three-dimensional manifold. We describe two methods to construct families of biminimal surfaces using both Riemannian and horizontally homothetic submersio…
We prove a Pohozaev type identity for non-linear eigenvalue equations of the Dirac operator on Riemannian spin manifolds with boundary. As an application, we obtain that the mean curvature H of a conformal immersion S^{n}-> R^{n+1} satisfies $\int \partial_X H=0$ where X is a conformal vector field on S^{n} and where the integration is carried out with respect to the Euclidean volume measure of the image.<BR> This identity is analogous to the Kazdan-Warner obstruction that appears in the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature on S^{n} inside the standard conformal class.
We use a new method to give conditions for the existence of a local isometric immersion of a Riemannian $n$-manifold $M$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n+k}$, for a given $n$ and $k$. These equate to the (local) existence of a $k$-tuple of scalar fields on the manifold, satisfying a certain non-linear equation involving the Riemannian curvature tensor of $M$. Setting $k=1$, we proceed to recover the fundamental theorem of hypersurfaces. In the case of manifolds of positive sectional curvature and $n\geq 3$, we reduce the solvability of the Gauss and Codazzi equations to the cancelation of a set of obstructio…
This paper studies conformal biharmonic immersions. We first study the transformations of Jacobi operator and the bitension field under conformal change of metrics. We then obtain an invariant equation for a conformal biharmonic immersion of a surface into Euclidean 3-space. As applications, we construct a 2-parameter family of non-minimal conformal biharmonic immersions of cylinder into $\r^3$ and some examples of conformal biharmonic immersions of 4-dimensional Euclidean space into sphere and hyperbolic space thus provide many simple examples of proper biharmonic maps with rich geometric mea…
We study two aspects of the loop group formulation for isometric immersions with flat normal bundle of space forms. The first aspect is to examine the loop group maps along different ranges of the loop parameter. This leads to various equivalences between global isometric immersion problems among different space forms and pseudo-Riemannian space forms. As a corollary, we obtain a non-immersibility theorem for spheres into certain pseudo-Riemannian spheres and hyperbolic spaces. The second aspect pursued is to clarify the relationship between the loop group formulation of isometric immersions o…
Given a compact manifold $M$ and a Riemannian manifold $N$ of bounded geometry, we consider the manifold ${\rm Imm} (M,N)$ of immersions from $M$ to $N$ and its subset ${\rm Imm}_μ(M,N)$ of those immersions with the property that the volume-form of the pull-back metric equals $μ$. We first show that the non-minimal elements of ${\rm Imm}_μ(M,N) $ form a splitting submanifold. On this submanifold we consider the Levi-Civita connection for various natural Sobolev metrics write down the geodesic equation and show local well-posedness in many cases. The question is a natural generalization of the …
We give a spinorial characterization of isometrically immersed surfaces of arbitrary signature into 3-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian space forms. For Lorentzian surfaces, this generalizes a recent work of the first author in $\mathbb{R}^{2,1}$ to other Lorentzian space forms. We also characterize immersions of Riemannian surfaces in these spaces. From this we can deduce analogous results for timelike immersions of Lorentzian surfaces in space forms of corresponding signature, as well as for spacelike and timelike immersions of surfaces of signature (0,2), hence achieving a complete spinorial de…
Let N be a complete, homogeneously regular Riemannian manifold of dimension greater than 2 and let M be a compact submanifold of N. Let $Σ$ be a compact orientable surface with boundary. We show that for any continuous $f: (Σ, \partial Σ) \rightarrow (N, M)$ for which the induced homomorphism on certain fundamental groups is injective, there exists a branched minimal immersion of $Σ$ solving the free boundary problem $(Σ, \partial Σ) \rightarrow (N, M)$, and minimizing area among all maps which induce the same action on the fundamental groups as f. Furthermore, under certain nonnegativity assu…
We prove that for any open Riemann surface $N,$ natural number $n\geq 3,$ non-constant harmonic map $h:N\to \mathbb{R}^{n-2}$ and holomorphic 2-form $H$ on $N,$ there exists a weakly complete harmonic map $X=(X_j)_{j=1,\ldots,n}:N \to \mathbb{R}^n$ with Hopf differential $H$ and $(X_j)_{j=3,\ldots,n}=h.$ In particular, there exists a complete conformal minimal immersion $Y=(Y_j)_{j=1,\ldots,n}:N \to \mathbb{R}^n$ such that $(Y_j)_{j=3,\ldots,n}=h.$ As a consequence of these results, complete full non-decomposable minimal surfaces with arbitrary conformal structure and whose generalized Gauss m…
Let $M$ be a space-like surface immersed in a 4-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian space form $R^4_2(c)$ with constant sectional curvature $c$ and index two. In the first part of this article, we prove that the Gauss curvature $K$, the normal curvature $K^D$, and mean curvature vector $H$ of $M$ satisfy the general inequality: $K+K^D\geq H,H +c$. In the second part, we investigate space-like minimal surfaces in $R^4_2(c)$ which satisfy the equality case of the inequality identically. Several classification results in this respect are then obtained.
This paper introduces a complex representation for spacelike surfaces in the Lorentz-Minkowski space $L^4$, based in two complex valued functions which can be assumed to be holomorphic or anti-holomorphic. When the immersion is contained in quadrics of $L^4$, the representation then allows us to obtain interesting partial differential equations with holomorphic or anti-holomorphic parameters, within which we find the partial Riccati Equation. Using then theory of holomorphic complex functions we construct explicitly new local solutions for those PDEs together with its associated geometric solu…
We investigate isometric immersions of locally conformally Kaehler metrics into Hopf manifolds. In particular, we study Hopf-induced metrics on compact complex surfaces.
An isometric immersion $f: M^{n} \rightarrow \tilde M^{m}$ from an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M^{n}$ into an almost Hermitian manifold $\tilde M^{m}$ of complex dimension $m$ is called pointwise slant if its Wirtinger angles define a function defined on $M$. In this paper we establish the existence and uniqueness theorems for pointwise slant immersions of Riemannian manifolds $M^{n}$ into a complex space form $\tilde M^{n}(c)$ of constant holomorphic sectional curvature $c$.
In this paper we prove several quantitative rigidity results for conformal immersions of surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with bounded total curvature. We show that (branched) conformal immersions which are close in energy to either a round sphere, a conformal Clifford torus, an inverted catenoid, an inverted Enneper's minimal surface or an inverted Chen's minimal graph must be close to these surfaces in the $W^{2,2}$-norm. Moreover, we apply these results to prove a corresponding rigidity result for complete, connected and non-compact surfaces.
For a given simply connected Riemannian surface Sigma, we relate the problem of finding minimal isometric immersions of Sigma into S^2 x R or H^2 x R to a system of two partial differential equations on Sigma. We prove that a constant intrinsic curvature minimal surface in S^2 x R or H^2 x R is either totally geodesic or part of an associate surface of a certain limit of catenoids in H^2 x R. We also prove that if a non constant curvature Riemannian surface admits a continuous one-parameter family of minimal isometric immersions into S^2 x R or H^2 x R, then all these immersions are associate.
For orthonormal normal sections of two-dimensional immersions in R^4 we define torsion coefficients and a functional for the total torsion. We discuss normal sections which are critical for this functional. In particular, a global estimate for the torsion coefficients of a critical normal section in terms of the curvature of the normal bundle is provided.
In this paper, following Sullivan, Kusner, and Schmitt, we study conformal immersions of Riemann surfaces into the three-dimensional Euclidean space. Regarding such immersions as special bundle maps from the tangent bundle of the surface to the cotangent bundle of the 2-dimensional sphere, we generalize the classical Weierstrass representation of minimal surfaces to the case of arbitrary conformal immersions. We study how such an immersion gives rise to a spin structure on the surface together with a pair of spinors and how the immersion itself can be studied by means of these spinors.
The family of Willmore immersions from a Riemann surface into $S^{n+2}$ can be divided naturally into the subfamily of Willmore surfaces conformally equivalent to a minimal surface in $\R^{n+2}$ and those which are not conformally equivalent to a minimal surface in $\R^{n+2}$. On the level of their conformal Gauss maps into $Gr_{1,3}(\R^{1,n+3})=SO^+(1,n+3)/SO^+(1,3)\times SO(n)$ these two classes of Willmore immersions into $S^{n+2}$ correspond to conformally harmonic maps for which every image point, considered as a 4-dimensional Lorentzian subspace of $\R^{1,n+3}$, contains a fixed lightlik…
We prove that there do not exist odd-dimensional stable compact minimal immersions in the product of two complex projective spaces. We also prove that the only stable compact minimal immersions in the product of a quaternionic projective space with any other Riemannian manifold are the products of quaternionic projective subspaces with compact stable minimal immersions of the second manifold in the Riemmanian product. These generalize similar results of the second-named author of immersions with low dimensions or codimensions to immersions with arbitrary dimensions. In addition, we prove that …
In this paper we show a quantitative rigidity result for the minimizer of the Willmore functional among all projective planes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with $n\ge 4$. We also construct an explicit counterexample to a corresponding rigidity result in codimension one, by showing that an Enneper surface might split-off during a blow-up process. For conformal immersions of spheres with large enough Willmore energies, we construct explicit counterexamples to a quantitative rigidity result and this complements the recently obtained rigidity results in [LaNg13].
In this paper, for an immersion $f$ of an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$ into $(n+d)$-Euclidean space we give a sufficient condition on $f$ so that, in case $d\leq 5$, any immersion $g$ of $M$ into $(n+d+1)$-Euclidean space that induces on $M$ a metric that is conformal to the metric induced by $f$ is locally obtained, in a dense subset of $M$, by a composition of $f$ and a conformal immersion from an open subset of $(n+d)$-Euclidean space into an open subset of $(n+d+1)$-Euclidean space. Our result extends a theorem for hypersurfaces due to M. Dajczer and E. Vergasta. The restriction…
We define virtual immersions, as a generalization of isometric immersions in a pseudo-Riemannian vector space. We show that virtual immersions possess a second fundamental form, which is in general not symmetric. We prove that a manifold admits a virtual immersion with skew symmetric second fundamental form, if and only if it is a symmetric space, and in this case the virtual immersion is essentially unique.
We consider submanifolds into Riemannian manifold with metallic structures. We obtain some new results for hypersurfaces in these spaces and we express the fundamental theorem of submanifolds into products spaces in terms of metallic structures. Moreover, we define new structures called complex metallic structures. We show that these structures are linked with complex structures. Then, we consider submanifolds into Riemannian manifold with such structures with a focus on invariant submanifolds and hypersurfaces. We also express in particular the fundamental theorem of submanifolds of complex s…
Let $\mathcal{R}$ be an open Riemann surface. In this paper we prove that every continuous function $M \to \mathbb{R}^n$, $n\ge 3$, defined on a divergent Jordan arc $M \subset \mathcal{R}$ can be approximated in the Carleman sense by conformal minimal immersions; thus providing a new generalization of Carleman's theorem. In fact, we prove that this result remains true for null curves and many other classes of directed holomorphic immersions for which the directing variety satisfies a certain flexibility property. Furthermore, the constructed immersions may be chosen to be complete or proper u…
Using the results of \cite{P1}, we get some estimates of warping functions for isometric immersions by changing the target manifolds by some types of Riemannian manifolds: constant space forms and Hermitian symmetric spaces. And we deal with equality cases and obtain their applications. Finally, we give some open problems.
Let us fix a conformal class $[g_0]$ and a spin structure $σ$ on a compact manifold $M$. For any $g\in [g_0]$, let $λ^+_1(g)$ be the smallest positive eigenvalue of the Dirac operator $D$ on $(M,g,σ)$. In a previous paper we have shown that $$λ_{min}(M,g_0,σ):=\inf_{g\in [g_0]} λ_1^+(g)\vol(M,g)^{1/n}>0.$$ In the present article, we enlarge the conformal class by certain singular metrics. We will show that if $λ_{min}(M,g_0,σ)<λ_{min}(S^n)$, then the infimum is attained on the enlarged conformal class. For proving this, we have to solve a system of semi-linear partial differential equations in…
Let $M$ be an open Riemann surface. We prove that every meromorphic function on $M$ is the complex Gauss map of a conformal minimal immersion $M\to\mathbb{R}^3$ which may furthermore be chosen as the real part of a holomorphic null curve $M\to\mathbb{C}^3$. Analogous results are proved for conformal minimal immersions $M\to\mathbb{R}^n$ for any $n>3$. We also show that every conformal minimal immersion $M\to\mathbb{R}^n$ is isotopic through conformal minimal immersions $M\to\mathbb{R}^n$ to a flat one, and we identify the path connected components of the space of all conformal minimal immersio…
The main goal of this paper is to show a counterexample to the following conjecture: {\bf Conjecture} [Meeks, Sullivan]: If $f:M\to \mathbb{R}^3$ is a complete proper minimal immersion where $M$ is a Riemannian surface without boundary and with finite genus, then $M$ is parabolic. We have proved: {\bf Theorem:} There exists $χ: D\longrightarrow \mathbb{R}^3$, a conformal proper minimal immersion defined on the unit disk.
For a smooth immersion $f$ from the punctured disk $D\backslash\{0\}$ into $\mathbb{R}^n$ extendable continuously at the puncture, if its mean curvature is square integrable and the measure of $f(D)\cap B_{r_k}=o(r_k)$ for a sequence $r_k\to 0$, we show that the Riemannian surface $(D_r\backslash\{0\},g)$ where $g$ is the induced metric is conformally equivalent to the unit Euclidean punctured disk, for any $r\in(0,1)$. For a locally $W^{2,2}$ Lipschitz immersion $f$ from the punctured disk $D_2\backslash\{0\}$ into $\mathbb{R}^n$, if $\|\nabla f\|_{L^\infty}$ is finite and the second fundamen…
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.
In this paper we show explicit examples of several families of immersions with constant mean curvature and non constant principal curvatures, in semi-riemannian manifolds with constant sectional curvature. In particular, we prove that every h in [-1,-2 sqrt{n-1}/n) can be realized as the constant curvature of a complete immersion of S_1^{n-1} x R in the (n+1)-dimensional de Sitter space S_1^{n+1}. We provide 3 types of immersions with cmc in the Minkowski space, 5 types of immersion with cmc in the de Sitter space and 5 types of immersion with cmc in the anti de Sitter space. At the end of the…
This thesis mainly treats two developments of the classical theory of hypersurfaces inside pseudo-Riemannian space forms. The former - a joint work with Francesco Bonsante - consists in the study of immersions of smooth manifolds into holomorphic Riemannian space forms of constant curvature -1 (including SL(2,C) with a multiple of its Killing form): this leads to a Gauss-Codazzi theorem, it suggests an approach to holomorphic transitioning of immersions into pseudo-Riemannian space forms, a trick to construct holomorphic maps into the PSL(2,C)-character variety, and leads to a restatement of B…
In this paper we study holomorphic immersions of open Riemann surfaces into C^n whose derivative lies in a conical algebraic subvariety A of C^n that is smooth away from the origin. Classical examples of such A-immersions include null curves in C^3 which are closely related to minimal surfaces in R^3, and null curves in SL_2(C) that are related to Bryant surfaces. We establish a basic structure theorem for the set of all A-immersions of a bordered Riemann surface, and we prove several approximation and desingularization theorems. Assuming that A is irreducible and is not contained in any hyper…
Consider a strictly convex bounded regular domain $C$ of $\R^3$. For any arbitrary finite topological type we find a compact Riemann surface $\mathcal{M}$, an open domain $M\subset \mathcal{M}$ with the fixed topological type, and a conformal complete proper minimal immersion $X:M\to C$ which can be extended to a continuous map $X:\overline{M}\to \overline{C}$.
A triharmonic map is a critical point of the 3-energy in the space of smooth maps between two Riemannian manifolds. We study a triharmonic isometric immersion into a space form of non-positively constant curvature. We show that if the domain is complete and both the 4-enegy and the L^4-norm of the tension field are finite, then such an immersion is minimal.
This paper is devoted to the study of the global properties of harmonically immersed Riemann surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3.$ We focus on the geometry of complete harmonic immersions with quasiconformal Gauss map, and in particular, of those with finite total curvature. We pay special attention to the construction of new examples with significant geometry.
We provide a local classification of isometric immersions $f\colon L^p\times_ρM^n\to\Q_c^{p+n+k}$ in codimensions $k=1, 2$ of warped products of Riemannian manifolds into space forms, under the assumptions that $n\geq k+1$ and that $N^{p+n}=L^p\times_ρM^n$ has no points with the same constant sectional curvature $c$ as the ambient space form.
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 $N$.
The isometric immersion of two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds or surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space is a fundamental problem in differential geometry. When the Gauss curvature is negative, the isometric immersion problem is considered in this paper through the Gauss-Codazzi system for the second fundamental forms. It is shown that if the Gauss curvature satisfies an integrability condition, the surface has a global smooth isometric immersion in the three-dimensional Euclidean space even if the Gauss curvature decays very slowly at infinity. The new idea of the proof is based o…
