English

Quadric surfaces of revolution in the 3-sphere as Weingarten surfaces

Differential Geometry 2026-02-26 v1

Abstract

The study of quadric surfaces of revolution is a cornerstone of classical Euclidean geometry, but its extension to the three-dimensional sphere S3\mathbb{S}^3 has not been sufficiently explored. This article addresses this important gap by providing a rigorous classification and characterization of non-degenerate quadric surfaces of revolution in S3\mathbb{S}^3, namely spherical ellipsoids, hyperboloids and paraboloids, generated by the rotation of spherical conics around a geodesic axis containing their foci or is orthogonal to them. Using the concept of spherical angular momentum as a prominent geometric invariant, we discover that these surfaces constitute a remarkable class of Weingarten surfaces and prove that they are uniquely characterised by a specific cubic functional relation between their principal curvatures. This result not only provides a unified description of spherical quadric surfaces of revolution, but also highlights a profound geometric universality, reflecting exactly the same cubic Weingarten relations observed in their Euclidean and Lorentzian counterparts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.21785,
  title  = {Quadric surfaces of revolution in the 3-sphere as Weingarten surfaces},
  author = {Ildefonso Castro and Daniel López-López},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21785},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

23 pages, 18 figures