We discuss the Ribaucour transformation of Legendre maps in Lie sphere geometry. In this context, we give a simple conceptual proof of Bianchi's original Permutability Theorem and its generalisation by Dajczer--Tojeiro. We go on to formulate and prove a higher dimensional version of the Permutability Theorem. It is shown how these theorems descend to the corresponding results for submanifolds in space forms.
Following Burstall and Hertrich-Jeromin we study the Ribaucour transformation of Legendre submanifolds in Lie sphere geometry. We give an explicit parametrization of the resulted Legendre submanifold $\hat{F}$ of a Ribaucour transformation, via a single real function $τ$ which represents the regular Ribaucour sphere congruence $s$ enveloped by the original Legendre submanifold $F$.
While a generic smooth Ribaucour sphere congruence admits exactly two envelopes, a discrete R-congruence gives rise to a 2-parameter family of discrete enveloping surfaces. The main purpose of this paper is to gain geometric insights into this ambiguity. In particular, discrete R-congruences that are enveloped by discrete channel surfaces and discrete Legendre maps with one family of spherical curvature lines are discussed.
A Clifford algebra model for M"obius geometry is presented. The notion of Ribaucour pairs of orthogonal systems in arbitrary dimensions is introduced, and the structure equations for adapted frames are derived. These equations are discretized and the geometry of the occuring discrete nets and sphere congruences is discussed in a conformal setting. This way, the notions of ``discrete Ribaucour congruences'' and ``discrete Ribaucour pairs of orthogonal systems'' are obtained --- the latter as a generalization of discrete orthogonal systems in Euclidean space. The relation of a Cauchy problem for…
We discuss channel surfaces in the context of Lie sphere geometry and characterise them as certain $Ω_{0}$-surfaces. Since $Ω_{0}$-surfaces possess a rich transformation theory, we study the behaviour of channel surfaces under these transformations. Furthermore, by using certain Dupin cyclide congruences, we characterise Ribaucour pairs of channel surfaces.
A geometric construction is provided that associates to a given flat front in $\mathbb{H}^3$ a pair of minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which are related by a Ribaucour transformation. This construction is generalized associating to a given frontal in $\mathbb{H}^3$ , a pair of frontals in $\mathbb{R}^3$ that are envelopes of a smooth congruence of spheres. The theory of Ribaucour transformations for minimal surfaces is reformulated in terms of a complex Riccati ordinary differential equation for a holomorphic function. This enables one to simplify and extend the classical theory, that in pr…
The conditions for a cuspidal edge, swallowtail and other fundamental singularities are given in the context of Lie sphere geometry. We then use these conditions to study the Lie sphere transformations of a surface.
We propose a twistor construction of surfaces in Lie sphere geometry based on the linear system which copies equations of Wilczynski's projective frame. In the particular case of Lie-applicable surfaces this linear system describes joint eigenfunctions of a pair of commuting Schrödinger operators with magnetic fields.
The method of moving frames in Lie sphere geometry has produced significant results in the classification of Dupin hypersurfaces in spheres. What is the secret of its effectiveness? The answer emerges in the classification of nonumbilic isoparametric surfaces in the space form geometries. Using the method of moving frames, the proof of this classification is an elementary exercise. The same proof classifies the cyclides of Dupin in Möbius geometry and finally in Lie sphere geometry, where all nonumbilic Dupin immersions are Lie sphere congruent to each other.
This is a survey of local and global classification results concerning Dupin hypersurfaces in $S^n$ (or ${\bf R}^n$) that have been obtained in the context of Lie sphere geometry. The emphasis is on results that relate Dupin hypersurfaces to isoparametric hypersurfaces in spheres. Along with these classification results, many important concepts from Lie sphere geometry, such as curvature spheres, Lie curvatures, and Legendre lifts of submanifolds of $S^n$ (or ${\bf R}^n$), are described in detail. The paper also contains several important constructions of Dupin hypersurfaces with certain speci…
A hypersurface $M$ in ${\bf R}^n$ or $S^n$ is said to be Dupin if along each curvature surface, the corresponding principal curvature is constant. A Dupin hypersurface is said to be proper Dupin if each principal curvature has constant multiplicity on $M$, i.e., the number of distinct principal curvatures is constant on $M$. The notions of Dupin and proper Dupin hypersurfaces in ${\bf R}^n$ or $S^n$ can be generalized to the setting of Lie sphere geometry, and these properties are easily seen to be invariant under Lie sphere transformations. This makes Lie sphere geometry an effective setting …
The theory of surfaces in Euclidean space can be naturally formulated in the more general context of Legendre surfaces into the space of contact elements. We address the question of deformability of Legendre surfaces with respect to the symmetry group of Lie sphere contact transformations from the point of view of the deformation theory of submanifolds in homogeneous spaces. Necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for a Legendre surface to admit non-trivial deformations and the corresponding existence problem is discussed.
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…
Making use of Murakami's classification of outer involutions in a Lie algebra and following the Morse-theoretic approach to harmonic two-spheres in Lie groups introduced by Burstall and Guest, we obtain a new classification of harmonic two-spheres in outer symmetric spaces and a Weierstrass-type representation for such maps. Several examples of harmonic maps into classical outer symmetric spaces are given in terms of meromorphic functions on $S^2$.
The unit sphere $\mathbb S^3$ can be identified with the unitary group SU(2). Under this identification the unit sphere can be considered as a non-commutative Lie group. The commutation relations for the vector fields of the corresponding Lie algebra define a 2-step sub-Riemannian manifold. We study sub-Riemannian geodesics on this sub-Riemannian manifold making use of the Hamiltonian formalism and solving the corresponding Hamiltonian system.
A hypersurface $M^{n-1}$ in Euclidean space $E^n$ is proper Dupin if the number of distinct principal curvatures is constant on $M^{n-1}$, and each principal curvature function is constant along each leaf of its principal foliation. This paper was originally published in 1989 (see Comments below), and it develops a method for the local study of proper Dupin hypersurfaces in the context of Lie sphere geometry using moving frames. This method has been effective in obtaining several classification theorems of proper Dupin hypersurfaces since that time. This updated version of the paper contains t…
In the present paper we study the Lie sphere geometry of Legendre surfaces by the method of moving frame and we prove an existence theorem for real-analytic Lie-minimal Legendre surfaces.
A compact semisimple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ induces a Poisson structure $π$ on the unit sphere $S$ in $\mathfrak{g}^*$. We compute the moduli space of Poisson structures on $S$ around $π$. This is the first explicit computation of a Poisson moduli space in dimension greater or equal than three around a degenerate (i.e. not symplectic) Poisson structure.
We investigate curved flats in Lie sphere geometry. We show that in this setting curved flats are in one-to-one correspondence with pairs of Demoulin families of Lie applicable surfaces related by Darboux transformation.
In this paper we develop new methods of study of generalized normal homogeneous Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we obtain a complete classification of generalized normal homogeneous Riemannian metrics on spheres. We prove that for any connected (almost effective) transitive on $S^n$ compact Lie group $G$, the family of $G$-invariant Riemannian metrics on $S^n$ contains generalized normal homogeneous but not normal homogeneous metrics if and only if this family depends on more than one parameters. Any such family (that exists only for $n=2k+1$) contains a metric $g_{\can}$ of constant sect…
Let $X$ denote a metric Lie group diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^3$ that admits an algebraic open book decomposition. In this paper we prove that if $Σ$ is an immersed surface in $X$ whose left invariant Gauss map is a diffeomorphism onto $\mathbb{S}^2$, then $Σ$ is an embedded sphere. As a consequence, we deduce that any constant mean curvature sphere of index one in $X$ is embedded.
If $M$ is an isoparametric hypersurface in a sphere $S^n$ with four distrinct principal curvatures, then the principal curvatures $κ_1,...,κ_4$ can be ordered so that their multiplicities satisfy $m_1=m_2$ and $m_3=m_4$, and the cross-ratio $r$ of the principal curvatures (the Lie curvature) equals -1. In this paper, we prove that if $M$ is an irreducible connected proper Dupin hypersurface in $\R^n$ (or $S^n$) with four distinct principal curvatures with multiplicities $m_1=m_2 \geq 1$ and $m_3=m_4=1$, and constant Lie curvature $r=-1$, then $M$ is equivalent by Lie sphere transformation to a…
We introduce two basic invariant forms which define generic surface in 3-space uniquely up to Lie sphere equivalence. Two particularly interesting classes of surfaces associated with these invariants are considered, namely, the Lie-minimal surfaces and the diagonally-cyclidic surfaces. For diagonally-cyclidic surfaces we derive the stationary modified Veselov-Novikov equation, whose role in the theory of these surfaces is similar to that of Calapso's equation in the theory of isothermic surfaces. Since Calapso's equation itself turns out to be related to the stationary Davey-Stewartson equatio…
Lie contact structures generalize the classical Lie sphere geometry of oriented hyperspheres in the standard sphere. They can be equivalently described as parabolic geometries corresponding to the contact grading of orthogonal real Lie algebra. It follows the underlying geometric structure can be interpreted in several equivalent ways. In particular, we show this is given by a split-quaternionic structure on the contact distribution, which is compatible with the Levi bracket. In this vein, we study the geometry of chains, a distinguished family of curves appearing in any parabolic contact geom…
We consider the space of tensor densities on the n-dimensional sphere with degree lambda (or, equivalently, of conformal densities with degree lambda). This space is a module over the group of diffeomorphisms, and consequently over the Lie algebra of vector fields, on the sphere, and we first prove that as a module over the conformal group, it is infinitesimally equivalent to an induced module from the principal series, precisely from the nonunitary spherical series on the space of smooth functions on the sphere. In function of lambda,(g,K)-simple and unitary submodules of the space of tensor …
The present paper starts with an introduction to quaternions and then defines the 3-dimmensional sphere as the set of quaternions of length one. The quaternion group induces on $\mathbb{S}^3$ a structure of noncommutative Lie group. This group is compact and the results obtained in this case are very different than those obtained in the case of the Heisenberg group, which is a noncompact Lie group. Like in the Heisenberg group case, we introduce a nonintegrable distribution on the sphere and a metric on it using two of the noncommutative left invariant vector fields. This way $\mathbb{S}^3$ be…
We construct pairs of conformally equivalent isospectral Riemannian metrics $ϕ_1 g$ and $ϕ_2 g$ on spheres $S^n$ and balls $B^{n+1}$ for certain dimensions $n$, the smallest of which is $n=7$, and on certain compact simple Lie groups. In the case of Lie groups, the metric $g$ is left-invariant. In the case of spheres and balls, the metric $g$ is not the standard metric but may be chosen arbitrarily close to the standard one. For the same manifolds $(M,g)$ we also show that the functions $ϕ_1$ and $ϕ_2$ are isospectral potentials for the Schrödinger operator $\hbar^2Δ+ϕ$. To our knowledge, thes…
This paper aims to provide a description of totally isotropic Willmore two-spheres and their adjoint transforms. We first recall the isotropic harmonic maps which are introduced by Hélein, Xia-Shen and Ma for the study of Willmore surfaces. Then we derive a description of the normalized potential (some Lie algebra valued meromorphic 1-forms) of totally isotropic Willmore two-spheres in terms of the isotropic harmonic maps. In particular, the corresponding isotropic harmonic maps are of finite uniton type. The proof also contains a concrete way to construct examples of totally isotropic Willmor…
We classify all harmonic maps with finite uniton number from a Riemann surface into an arbitrary compact simple Lie group $G$, whether $G$ has trivial centre or not, in terms of certain pieces of the Bruhat decomposition of the group $Ω_\mathrm{alg}{G}$ of algebraic loops in $G$ and corresponding canonical elements. This will allow us to give estimations for the minimal uniton number of the corresponding harmonic maps with respect to different representations and to make more explicit the relation between previous work by different authors on harmonic two-spheres in classical compact Lie group…
Let ${\mathcal F}_λ(\mathbb{S}^n)$ be the space of tensor densities on $\mathbb{S}^n$ of degree $λ$. We consider this space as an induced module of the nonunitary spherical series of the group $\mathrm{SO}_0(n+1,1)$ and classify $(\mathrm{so}(n+1,1),\mathrm{SO}(n+1))$-sim$unitary submodules of ${\mathcal F}_λ(\mathbb{S}^n)$ as a function of $λ$.
Let Sol be the three-dimensional solvable Lie group equipped with its standard left-invariant Riemannian metric. We give a precise description of the cut locus of the identity, and a maximal domain in the Lie algebra on which the Riemannian exponential map is a diffeomorphism. As a consequence, we prove that the metric spheres in Sol are topological spheres, and we characterize their singular points almost exactly.
We show that for every convex polyhedral sphere $P$ in $S^3$, there exist two canonical, non-edge-to-edge tilings of $S^{2}$ whose tiles are given by all the faces of $P$ and the dual convex polyhedral sphere $P^*$ to $P$. Under the identifications of $S^{3}$ with the Lie group $SU(2)$, and of $S^{2}$ with the unit sphere in the Lie algebra $su(2)$ of $SU(2)$, our result is obtained by considering the set $\widetilde P$ of outward unit normal vectors to $P$ and the maps from $\widetilde P$ to $S^{2}$ defined by using the left and right Maurer-Cartan forms on $SU(2)$.
We classify representations of compact connected Lie groups whose induced action on the unit sphere has an orbit space isometric to a Riemannian orbifold.
By a theorem of Kirchhoff if the six sphere admits an almost complex structure then the seven sphere is parallelizable, more crucial, he exhibited an explicit global frame constructed out of the given almost complex structure. This result implicitly equips the seven sphere with a definite H-space multiplication. We propose to address the existence problem of complex structures on the six sphere studying the associated parallelism-multiplications on the seven sphere. We ask to what extent the integrability condition of the almost complex structure amounts to the constancy of the structure funct…
We use Lie-theoretic methods to explicitly compute the full spectrum of the Laplace--Beltrami operator on homogeneous spheres which occur as geodesic distance spheres in (compact or noncompact) symmetric spaces of rank one, and provide a single unified formula for all cases. As an application, we find all resonant radii for distance spheres in the compact case, i.e., radii where there is bifurcation of embedded constant mean curvature spheres, and show that distance spheres are stable and locally rigid in the noncompact case.
