Liouville's theorem revisited (Q2467591): Difference between revisions

Summary: Liouville's theorem turns out to be equivalent to a rigidity theorem for isometric immersions of open subsets of Euclidean space of dimension \(n\geq 3\) into the light cone of Minkowski space of dimension \((n+2)\). We give a short direct proof of this theorem, thus yielding a simple new proof of Liouville's theorem. Understanding where things to wrong in the case \(n=2\) leads to an interesting characterization of the complex exponential function.