Global results on Bonnet surfaces (Q1299946)

The paper deals with Bonnet surfaces in three dimensional Euclidean space \(E ^3\), of the type of non-constant mean curvature that admit infinitely many non-trivial and distinct isometries preserving the mean curvature. The local theory of such surfaces has been developed under the assumption that the surfaces contain no umbilic points and no critical points of the mean curvature. The author proves that if these restrictions are eliminated, then one does not obtain any better results than the discovered local ones, except in one case in which the set of the umbilic points, known to consist of one point, is equal to the set of the critical points of the mean curvature. Moreover, he shows that the index of this umbilic point, as isolated singularity of the foliation of the principal curves, is one.