Lines of curvature, ridges and conformal invariants of hypersurfaces (Q1878966): Difference between revisions

The authors of this article define some conformal invariants for hypersurfaces M in \({\mathbb R}^n\). In particular, they focus on the study of hypersurfaces from the viewpoint of their contacts with hyperspheres. Their approach is based on the fact that conformal maps preserve these contacts. They obtain some differential 1-forms defined along the curvature lines of M (considered as curves in \(n\)-space) which are preserved by conformal maps (Theorem 1, 2 and 3). In some cases, as for instance surfaces in 3-space, these 1-forms can be extended over the whole surface so that their exterior product define conformally invariant volume forms (Theorem 4 and Corollary 1). These results give a generalization of the conformal principal curvatures of surfaces introduced by \textit{A. Tresse} [Acta Math. 18, 1--88 (1894; JFM 25.0641.01)]. Another set of conformally invariant subsets of M are the ridges, that are those points at which the hypersurface has a contact of higher order with some of its focal hyperspheres. In the article some characterizations of ridge points are given: on the one hand, by defining ridges of different orders, according to the order of contact of the hypersurface with the corresponding focal hyperspheres at the given point; on the other hand, through the contacts of focal hyperspheres with the curvature lines of the hypersurface (Theorem 5 and 6). A nice consequence is that the highest order ridges are vertices of the curvature lines considered as curves in \(n\)-space (Corollary~3).