Orbits of SU(2)-representations and minimal isometric immersions (Q1568702)

Minimal isometric immersions of Riemannian manifolds (in particular spheres) into spheres have been widely studied since the works by Calabi and Takahashi in the late sixties and do Carmo and Wallach in the seventies. In the present paper, the authors study \(SU(2)\)-equivariant minimal isometric immersions of the three sphere into spheres. They deal with the problem whether for a fixed degree, the smallest dimension of the target space \(S^N\) (called \`\` target dimension\'\') is achieved. They show that there exists an \(SU(2)\)-equivariant minimal isometric immersion of \(S^3\) into \(S^{36}\) of degree 36 which is not linearly rigid and admits at least a nine dimensional space of deformations. As a consequence, for degree 36, no \(SU(3)\)-equivariant minimal isometric immersion achieves the minimal target dimension. Moreover, the authors study minimal isometric immersion with higher isotropy order \(d \geq 1\), i.e., such that their higher-order fundamental forms up to order \(d\) have the same norms as the ones of the standard minimal isometric immersion. Isometric immersion with higher isotropy order \(d \geq 1\) play an important role in the study of the geometry of the moduli space of all minimal isometric immersions. The authors prove that, for immersions of the three sphere, for every positive integer \(d\), there exists an integer \(k_d\) such that, for all degrees \(k \geq k_d\) there exist \(SU(2)\)-equivariant minimal immersions of isotropy order \(d\) from \(S^3\) into \(S^k\) for \(k\) even and into \(S^{2k+1}\) for \(k\) odd.