English

Conformal trajectories in 3-dimensional space form

Differential Geometry 2024-05-28 v1

Abstract

We introduce the notion of conformal trajectories in three-dimensional Riemannian manifolds M3M^3. Given a conformal vector field VX(M3)V\in\mathfrak{X}(M^3), a conformal trajectory of VV is a regular curve γ\gamma in M3M^3 satisfying γγ=qV×γ\nabla_{\gamma'}\gamma'=q\, V\times\gamma', for some fixed non-zero constant qRq\in {\mathbb{R}}. In this paper, we study conformal trajectories in the space forms R3{\mathbb{R}}^3, S3{\mathbb{S}}^3 and H3{\mathbb{H}}^3. For (non-Killing) conformal vector fields in S3{\mathbb{S}}^3 (respectively in H3{\mathbb{H}}^3), we prove that conformal trajectories have constant curvature and its torsion is a linear combination of trigonometric (respectively hyperbolic) functions on the arc-length parameter. In the case of Euclidean space R3{\mathbb{R}}^3, we obtain the same result for the radial vector field and characterising all conformal trajectories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.15890,
  title  = {Conformal trajectories in 3-dimensional space form},
  author = {Rafael Lopez and Marian Ioan Munteanu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.15890},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

13 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:39:34.451Z