English

Nonnegatively curved Euclidean submanifolds in codimension two

Differential Geometry 2016-06-24 v2

Abstract

We provide a classification of compact Euclidean submanifolds MnRn+2M^n\subset{\mathbb{R}}^{n+2} with nonnegative sectional curvature, for n3n\ge 3. The classification is in terms of the induced metric (including the diffeomorphism classification of the manifold), and we study the structure of the immersions as well. In particular, we provide the first known example of a nonorientable quotient (Sn1×S1)/Z2Rn+2({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}\times{\mathbb{S}}^1)/{{\mathbb{Z}}_2}\subset{\mathbb{R}}^{n+2} with nonnegative curvature. For the 3-dimensional case, we show that either the universal cover is isometric to S2×R{\mathbb{S}}^2\times{\mathbb{R}}, or M3M^3 is diffeomorphic to a lens space, and the complement of the (nonempty) set of flat points is isometric to a twisted cylinder (N2×R)/Z(N^2\times{\mathbb{R}})/{\mathbb{Z}}. As a consequence we conclude that, if the set of flat points is not too big, there exists a unique flat totally geodesic surface in M3M^3 whose complement is the union of one or two twisted cylinders over disks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.03681,
  title  = {Nonnegatively curved Euclidean submanifolds in codimension two},
  author = {Luis A. Florit and Wolfgang Ziller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.03681},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici