Explicit formulas for biharmonic submanifolds in non-Euclidean 3-spheres (Q2479814)

A map \(\varphi: M\to N\) from a Riemannian manifold \(M\) into a Riemannian manifold \(N\) is said to be biharmonic if it is a ``critical point'' of the bi-energy functional, that means, if the Euler-Lagrange equation \[ -\Delta\tau- \text{trace\,}\mathbb{R}^N(d\varphi,\tau)\,d\varphi= 0\;\text{ with }\;\tau= \text{trace}(\nabla d\varphi) \] is satisfied. Harmonic maps are biharmonic. Until now the biharmonic maps into the three-dimensional real space forms and some other three-dimensional spaces \(N\) were classified. In this paper the work is continued by deriving the parametrizations of the biharmonic Legendre curves and Hopf cylinders in a Sasakian space form \((\mathbb{S}^3,\varphi,\xi,\eta,g)\) of constant \(\varphi\)-sectional curvature \(c> 1\); the structure \((\varphi,\xi,\eta,g)\) is a modification (due to \textit{S. Tanno}, Ill. J. Math. 12, 700--717 (1968; Zbl 0165.24703)) of the canonical Sasakian structure of the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^3\subset\mathbb{C}^2\) depending on a parameter \(0< a< 1\).