Reduction of variables for Willmore-Chen submanifolds in seven spheres (Q1961338)

For a compact \(n\)-dimensional submanifold \(M\) of a Riemannian manifold \(\bar{M}\), the Willmore-Chen functional is defined as \(W(M)=\int_{M} (\alpha^2-\tau_{e})^{n/2} dM\), where \(\alpha\) is the mean curvature function and \(\tau_{e}\) the extrinsic scalar curvature of \(M\) into \(\bar{M}\). When \(n=2\), \(W\) is known as the Willmore functional. One of the important properties of \(W\) is its invariance under conformal transformations of the ambient space \(\bar{M}\). The paper under review considers the critical points of \(W\), called the Willmore-Chen submanifolds, in the 7-sphere associated with the generalized Kaluza-Klein metrics. Let \(\pi\) be the Hopf fibration of \(S^7\) over \(S^4\), \(h\) a Riemannian metric on \(S^4\) and \(v\) a positive function on \(S^4\), the generalized Kaluza-Klein metric is defined as \(\bar{h}=\pi^{*}h+\epsilon(v\circ \pi)^2 \omega^{*}(d\sigma^2)\), where \(\epsilon=1\), or \(-1\), \(\omega\) is the canonical \(1-\)form and the \(d\sigma^2\) is the standard metric on \(S^3\). For a closed curve in \(S^4\), \(M_{\gamma}=\pi^{-1}(\gamma)\) is a compact 4-dimensional submanifold of \(S^7\) which is \(S^3\) invariant (Proposition 1). The main theorem (Theorem 1) of the paper relates \(W(M_{\gamma})\) to a functional over \(\gamma\), thus reducing the problem of finding the Willmore-Chen submanifolds to that of finding the critical points of an elastic energy functional (on curves). As an application, the authors construct examples of constant mean curvature Willmore-Chen submanifolds.