In the 1950's Hopf gave examples of non-round convex 2-spheres in Euclidean 3-space with rotational symmetry that satisfy a linear relationship between their principal curvatures. In this paper we investigate conditions under which evolving a smooth rotationally symmetric sphere by a linear combination of its radii of curvature yields a Hopf sphere. When the coefficients of the flow have certain integer values, the fate of an initial sphere is entirely determined by the local geometry of its isolated umbilic points. A surprising variety of behaviours is uncovered: convergence to round spheres and non-round Hopf spheres, as well as divergence to infinity.
The critical quantity is the rate of vanishing of the astigmatism - the difference of the radii of curvature - at the isolated umbilic points. It is proven that the size of this quantity versus the coefficient in the flow function determines the fate of the evolution.
The geometric setting for the equation is Radius of Curvature space, viewed as a pair of hyperbolic/AdS half-planes joined along their boundary, the umbilic horizon. A rotationally symmetric sphere determines a parameterized curve in this plane with end-points on the umbilic horizon. The slope of the curve at the umbilic horizon is linked by the Codazzi-Mainardi equations to the rate of vanishing of astigmatism, and for generic initial conditions can be used to determine the outcome of the flow.
The slope can jump during the flow, and a number of examples are given: instant jumps of the initial slope, as well as umbilic circles that contract to points in finite time and 'pop' the slope. Finally, we present soliton-like solutions: curves that evolve under linear flows by mutual hyperbolic/AdS isometries (dilation and translation) of Radius of Curvature space. A forthcoming paper will apply these geometric ideas to non-linear curvature flows.
We prove that any uniformly elliptic Weingarten (topological) sphere in S2xR must be congruent to the canonical example associated to the Weingarten equation. The result is obtained by proving that rotational uniformly elliptic Weingarten surfaces in S2xR have bounded second fundamental form together with a Hopf type result by J. A. Gálvez and P. Mira.
An idea of Hopf's for applying complex analysis to the study of constant mean curvature spheres is generalized to cover a wider class of spheres, namely, those satisfying a Weingarten relation of a certain type, namely H = f(H^2-K) for some smooth function f, where H and K are the mean and Gauss curvatures, respectively. The results are either not new or are minor extensions of known results, but the method, which involves introducing a different conformal structure on the surface than the one induced by the first fundamental form, is different from the one used by Hopf and requires less techn…
We show that any compact surface of genus zero in Euclidean 3-space that satisfies a quasiconformal inequality between its principal curvatures is a round sphere. This solves an old open problem by H. Hopf, and gives a spherical version of Simon's quasiconformal Bernstein theorem. The result generalizes, among others, Hopf's theorem for constant mean curvature spheres, the classification of round spheres as the only compact elliptic Weingarten surfaces of genus zero, and the uniqueness theorem for ovaloids by Han, Nadirashvili and Yuan. The proof relies on the Bers-Nirenberg representation of …
We prove a uniqueness theorem for immersed spheres of prescribed (non-constant) mean curvature in homogeneous three-manifolds. In particular, this uniqueness theorem proves a conjecture by A.D. Alexandrov about immersed spheres of prescribed Weingarten curvature in R3 for the special but important case of prescribed mean curvature. As a consequence, we extend the classical Hopf uniqueness theorem for constant mean curvature spheres to the case of immersed spheres of prescribed antipodally symmetric mean curvature in R3.
In this paper we prove rigidity results for two-dimensional, closed, immersed, non-necessarily convex, self-similar solutions of a wide class of fully non-linear parabolic flows in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We show this self-similar solutions are the round spheres centered at the origin provided it has genus zero and satisfies a suitable upper pinching estimate for the Gaussian curvature. As applications, we obtain rigidity results for the round sphere as the only closed, immersed, genus zero, self-similar solution of several well known flows, as the flow of the powers of mean curvature, the harmonic me…
A fibration of a Riemannian manifold is fiberwise homogeneous if there are isometries of the manifold onto itself, taking any given fiber to any other one, and preserving fibers. Examples are fibrations of Euclidean n-space by parallel n-planes, and the Hopf fibrations of the round n-sphere by great n-spheres. In this paper, we describe all the fiberwise homogeneous fibrations of Euclidean and hyperbolic 3-space by geodesics. Our main result is that, up to fiber-preserving isometries, there is precisely a one-parameter family of such fibrations of Euclidean 3-space, and a two-parameter family …
The Hopf surfaces provide a family of minimal non-Kähler surfaces of class VII on which little is known about the Chern-Ricci flow. We use a construction of Gauduchon-Ornea for locally conformally Kähler metrics on primary Hopf surfaces of class 1 to study solutions of the Chern-Ricci flow. These solutions reach a volume collapsing singularity in finite time, and we show that the metric tensor satisfies a uniform upper bound, supporting the conjecture that the Gromov-Hausdorff limit is isometric to a round $S^1$. Uniform $C^{1+β}$ estimates are also established for the potential. Previous resu…
In 1951, H. Hopf proved that the only surfaces, homeomorphic to the sphere, with constant mean curvature in the Euclidean space are the round (geometrical) spheres. In this paper we survey some contributions of Renato Tribuzy to generalize the result of Hopf as well as some recent results of the authors using these techniques for shrinking solitons of curvature flows and for surfaces in three-dimensional warped product manifolds, specially the de Sitter-Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom manifolds.
In 1951, H. Hopf proved that the only surfaces, homeomorphic to the sphere, with constant mean curvature in the Euclidean space are the round (geometrical) spheres. These results were generalized by S. S. Chern, and then by Eschenburg and Tribuzy, for surfaces, homeomorphic to the sphere, in Riemannian manifolds with constant sectional curvature whose mean curvature function satisfies some bound on its differential. In this paper, using techniques partial differential equations in the complex plane which generalizes the notion of holomorphy, we extend these results for surfaces in a wide class…
In this paper, we prove that a two-dimensional self-shrinker, homeomorphic to the sphere, immersed in the three dimensional Euclidean space is a round sphere, provided its mean curvature and the norm of its position vector have an upper bound in terms of the norm of its traceless second fundamental form. The example constructed by Drugan justifies that the hypothesis on the second fundamental form is necessary. We can also prove the same kind of rigidity results for surfaces with parallel weighted mean curvature vector in R n with radial weight. These results are applications of a new generali…
In this work, we study helix spacelike and timelike surfaces in the Lorentzian Berger sphere $\s_{\varepsilon}^3$, that is the three-dimensional sphere endowed with a $1$-parameter family of Lorentzian metrics, obtained by deforming the round metric on $\s^3$ along the fibers of the Hopf fibration $\s^3\to \s^2({1}/{2})$ by $-\varepsilon^2$. Our main result provides a characterization of the helix surfaces in $\s_{\varepsilon}^3$ using the symmetries of the ambient space and a general helix in $\s_{\varepsilon}^3$, with axis the infinitesimal generator of the Hopf fibers. Also, we construct so…
It was recently proved that embedded solutions of Euclidean hypersurface flows with speeds given by concave (convex), degree one homogeneous functions of the Weingarten map are interior (exterior) non-collapsing. These results were subsequently extended to hypersurface flows in the sphere and hyperbolic space. In the first part of the paper, we show that locally convex solutions are exterior non-collapsing for a larger class of speed functions than previously considered; more precisely, we show that the previous results hold when convexity of the speed function is relaxed to inverse-concavity.…
We study bifurcation for the constant scalar curvature equation along a one-parameter family of Riemannian metrics on the total space of a harmonic Riemannian submersion. We provide an existence theorem for bifurcation points and a criterion to see that the conformal factors corresponding to the bifurcated metrics must be indeed constant along the fibers. In the case of the canonical variation of a Riemannian submersion with totally geodesic fibers, we characterize discreteness of the set of all degeneracy points along the family and give a sufficient condition to guarantee that bifurcation ne…
In this paper, we study the prescribed $Q$-curvature problem on closed four-dimensional Riemannian manifolds when the total integral of the $Q$-curvature is a positive integer multiple of the one of the four-dimensional round sphere. This problem has a variational structure with a lack of compactness. Using some topological tools of the theory of "critical points at infinity" combined with a refined blow-up analysis and some dynamical arguments, we identify the accumulations points of all noncompact flow lines of a pseudogradient flow, the so called critical points at infinity of the associate…
