Immersions with totally reducible focal set (Q1201914): Difference between revisions

According to the authors the focal set of an immersion into Euclidean space is called totally reducible, if it degenerates to a collection of affine subspaces in every fiber of the normal bundle. This condition is known to be equivalent to the flatness of the normal bundle of the immersion [see \textit{C. L. Terng}, Math. Ann. 277, 95-111 (1987; Zbl 0596.53049) or the reviewer, J. Differ. Geom. 16, 93-100 (1981; Zbl 0404.53005)]. The authors present a lot of examples of a rather general type for this kind of immersions. In particular they show that for every compact surface such an immersion can be found for every codimension \(>1\), and in most cases these surfaces can be embedded with this property. Though for several of their examples the flatness of the normal connection can be seen rather easily, the authors prefer to consider the focal set directly.