Hypersurfaces with flat centroaffine metric and equations of associativity (Q1430019): Difference between revisions

This paper contributes to the investigation of non-degenerate surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with flat centroaffine metric \(h\). It is well known that the integrability conditions, written in terms of the Levi-Civita connection of \(h\), have a complicated form, in particular due to a nonlinear expression in terms of the cubic form \(C\); this expression reads (\(u,v,w\) are vector fields): \[ R(C):= C(C(w,u),v) - C(C(v,u),w). \] At first time a term like \(R(C)\) was investigated by \textit{L. Vrancken, A.-M. Li}, and \textit{U. Simon} [Math. Z. 206, No.~4, 651--658 (1991; Zbl 0721.53014)] and, also under algebraic view points, by \textit{A. M. Li} and \textit{C. P. Wang} [Result. Math. 20, No.~3/4, 660--681 (1991; Zbl 0752.53010)]. [Reviewer's remark: \(R(C)\) also defines an \(h\)-algebraic curvature tensor. It that does not appear in the literature so far.] Ferapontov investigates \(R(C)\) under analytic view points in dimension \(n=2\). Namely, as the centroaffine metric is flat and as \(C\) satisfies Codazzi equations, \(C\) can be represented as a third order derivative of a differentiable function \(f\). The author mainly restricts to hyperbolic surfaces. In asymptotic coordinates \((x,y)\), this leads to a third order nonlinear PDE, called the equation of associativity). We use subindices to indicate differentiation: \[ f_{xxx}f_{yyy} - f_{xxy} f_{xyy} = 1. \] The main part of the paper consists in the discussion of solutions of this PDE; this leads to partial classifications for flat, centroaffine surfaces. [Reviewer's remark: The representation of cubic forms in terms of derivatives of functions can be generalized from flat spaces to projectively flat spaces; see [\textit{J. Leder}, Generation of Codazzi tensors by functions. Thesis TU Berlin, Fachbereich Mathematik, 77 p. (1999; Zbl 0919.53007)]. The author points out that the investigation of centroaffinely flat hypersurfaces is also of great interest in the context of conformal flatness of the class of relative metrics; this class includes the Euclidean second fundamental form.