18 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the AMS Contemporary Mathematics Series, "Proceedings of the Congress in memory of Alfred Gray" (eds. M. Fernandez, J.A. Wolf)
We establish a correspondence between Darboux's special isothermic surfaces of type (A,0,C,D) and the solutions of the second order PDE : uΔ(u)-|\nabla(u)|^{2}+Φ^{4}=s, s \in R. We then use the classical Darboux transformation for isothermic surfaces to construct a Bäcklund transformation for this equation and prove a superposition formula for its solutions. As an application we discuss 1 and 2-soliton solutions and the corresponding surfaces.
The special isothermic surfaces, discovered by Darboux in connection with deformations of quadrics, admit a simple explanation via the gauge-theoretic approach to isothermic surfaces. We find that they fit into a heirarchy of special classes of isothermic surface and extend the theory to arbitrary codimension.
We show that the theory of isothermic surfaces in $\E^3$ -- one of the oldest branches of differential geometry -- can be reformulated within the modern theory of completely integrable (soliton) systems. This enables one to study the geometry of isothermic surfaces in $\E^3$ by means of powerful spectral methods available in the soliton theory. Also the associated non-linear system is interesting in itself since it displays some unconventional soliton features and, physically, could be applied in the theory of infinitesimal deformations of membranes.
Isothermic surfaces in $S^n$ are characterised by the existence of a pencil $\nabla^t$ of flat connections. Such a surface is special of type $d$ if there is a family $p(t)$ of $\nabla^t$-parallel sections whose dependence on the spectral parameter $t$ is polynomial of degree $d$. We prove that any isothermic surface admits a family of $\nabla^t$-parallel sections which is a formal Laurent series in $t$. As an application, we give conformally invariant conditions for an isothermic surface in $S^3$ to be special.
In this note we classify all Bonnet pairs on a simply connected domain. Our main intent was to apply what we call a quaternionic function theory to a concrete problem in differential geometry. The ideas are simple: conformal immersions into quaternions or imaginary quaternions take the place of chart maps for a Riemann surface. Starting from a reference immersion we construct all conformal immersions of a given (simply connected) Riemann surface (up to translational periods) by spin transformations. With this viewpoint in mind we discuss how to construct all Bonnet pairs on a simply connected …
We study Christoffel and Darboux transforms of discrete isothermic nets in 4-dimensional Euclidean space: definitions and basic properties are derived. Analogies with the smooth case are discussed and a definition for discrete Ribaucour congruences is given. Surfaces of constant mean curvature are special among all isothermic surfaces: they can be characterized by the fact that their parallel constant mean curvature surfaces are Christoffel and Darboux transforms at the same time. This characterization is used to define discrete nets of constant mean curvature. Basic properties of discrete net…
A Laguerre geometric local characterization is given of L-minimal surfaces and Laguerre deformations (T-transforms) of L-minimal isothermic surfaces in terms of the holomorphicity of a quartic and a quadratic differential. This is used to prove that, via their Laguerre Gauss maps, the T-transforms of L-minimal isothermic surfaces have constant mean curvature in some translate of hyperbolic 3-space or de Sitter 3-space in Minkowski 4-space, or have mean curvature zero in some translate of a time-oriented lightcone in Minkowski 4-space. As an application, we show that various instances of the La…
We discuss the problem of $R$-separability (separability of variables with a factor $R$) in the stationary Schrödinger equation on $n$-dimensional Riemann space. We follow the approach of Gaston Darboux who was the first to give the first general treatment of $R$-separability in PDE (Laplace equation on ${\mathbb E}^3$). According to Darboux $R$-separability amounts to two conditions: metric is isothermic (all its parametric surfaces are isothermic in the sense of both classical differential geometry and modern theory of solitons) and moreover when an isothermic metric is given their Lamé coef…
We propose a unified definition for discrete analogues of constant mean curvature surfaces in spaces of constant curvature as a special case of discrete special isothermic nets. Bäcklund transformations and Lawson's correspondence are discussed. It is shown that the definition generalizes previous definitions and a construction for discrete cmc surfaces of revolution in space forms is provided.
In this paper, we study solitons on $3$-dimensional manifolds. In particular, we show that $3$-dimensional pseudo-symmetric gradient Ricci solitons and nontrivial gradient Yamabe solitons are locally isometric to either $\mathbb{R}^{3}$, $\mathbb{S}^{3}$, $\mathbb{H}^{3}$, $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{S}^{2}$ or $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{H}^{2}$.
We study invariant solutions to the Positive Hermitian Curvature Flow, introduced by Ustinovskiy, on complex Lie groups. We show in particular that the canonical scale-static metrics on the special linear groups, arising from the Killing form, are dynamically unstable. This disproves a conjecture of Ustinovskiy. We also construct certain perfect Lie groups that admit at least two distinct invariant solitons for the flow, only one of which is algebraic. This is the second known example of a geometric flow with non-algebraic, homogeneous solitons. The first being the G2-Laplacian flow.
On a manifold of dimension at least six, let $(g,τ)$ be a pair consisting of a Kähler metric g which is locally Kähler irreducible, and a nonconstant smooth function $τ$. Off the zero set of $τ$, if the metric $\hat{g}=g/τ^2$ is a gradient Ricci soliton which has soliton function $1/τ$, we show that $\hat{g}$ is Kähler with respect to another complex structure, and locally of a type first described by Koiso. Moreover, $τ$ is a special Kähler-Ricci potential, a notion defined in earlier works of Derdzinski and Maschler. The result extends to dimension four with additional assumptions. We also d…
We give an analytic approach to the translating soliton equation with a special emphasis in the study of the Dirichlet problem in convex domains of the plane.
We construct Lagrangian translating solitons by desingularizing the intersection points between Lagrangian Grim Reaper cylinders with the same phase using special Lagrangian Lawlor necks. The resulting Lagrangian translating solitons could have arbitrarily many ends and non-contractible loops.
Soliton spheres are immersed 2-spheres in the conformal 4-sphere S^4=HP^1 that allow rational, conformal parametrizations f:CP^1->HP^1 obtained via twistor projection and dualization from rational curves in CP^{2n+1}. Soliton spheres can be characterized as the case of equality in the quaternionic Pluecker estimate. A special class of soliton spheres introduced by Taimanov are immersions into R^3 with rotationally symmetric Weierstrass potentials that are related to solitons of the mKdV-equation via the ZS-AKNS linear problem. We show that Willmore spheres and Bryant spheres with smooth ends a…
In this paper we study a special type of metric called *-Ricci soliton on para-Sasakian manifold. We prove that if the para-Sasakian metric is a *-Ricci soliton on a manifold M, then M is either D-homothetic to an Einstein manifold, or the Ricci tensor of M with respect to the canonical paracontact connection vanishes.
In this article we investigate the dynamics of special solutions to the surface diffusion flow of idealised ribbons. This equation reduces to studying the curve diffusion flow for the profile curve of the ribbon. We provide: (1) a complete classification of stationary solutions; (2) qualitative results on shrinkers, translators, and rotators; and (3) an explicit parametrisation of a shrinking figure eight curve.
In this paper, we discuss a one parameter family of complex Born-Infeld solitons arising from a one parameter family of minimal surfaces. The process enables us to generate a new solution of the B-I equation from a given complex solution of a special type (which are abundant). We illustrate this with many examples. We find that the action or the energy of this family of solitons remains invariant in this family and find that the well-known Lorentz symmetry of the B-I equations is responsible for it.
