English

A duality theorem for a four dimensional Willmore energy

Differential Geometry 2024-04-17 v3

Abstract

We prove an analog of Bryant's duality theorem for a four dimensional Willmore energy EGR\mathcal{E}_{GR} obtained by Graham-Reichert and Zhang. We show that for an immersion Φ\Phi from a four dimensional compact manifold without boundary Σ\Sigma into R5\mathbb{R}^5, the energy EGR(Φ)\mathcal{E}_{GR}(\Phi) is equal to two energies on its conformal Gauss map YY. One defined only in terms of the image of YY, which is the analog of the area functional for Willmore surfaces, and an other one defined on maps from Σ\Sigma into the De Sitter space S5,1\mathbb{S}^{5,1}, which is the analog of the Dirichlet energy for Willmore surfaces. We prove that even when restricted to immersions of a given topological manifold Σ4\Sigma^4, EGR\mathcal{E}_{GR} is never bounded from below on the set of immersions from Σ\Sigma into R5\mathbb{R}^5. We exhibit a second conformally invariant energy EP\mathcal{E}_P which is bounded from below and whose construction is closer to the two dimensional Willmore energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.11433,
  title  = {A duality theorem for a four dimensional Willmore energy},
  author = {Dorian Martino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.11433},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

49pages, v2 : reference added and some typos corrected, v3 : typos corrected, corrections in the proof of Proposition I

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:01:29.358Z