Stability of area-preserving variations in space forms (Q934642)

The authors study compact hypersurfaces \(M\) of real space forms. They define inductively the functional \(\mathcal A_r = \int_M F_r dM\), where \(F_0=1\), \(F_1=S_1\), \(F_r = S_r+c(n-r+1)/(r-1) F_{r-2}\) and \(S_r\) denotes the r-th elementary symmetric function associated to the shape operator of the immersion. They consider the problem of minimizing \(\mathcal A_r\) while keeping the area of \(M\) constant and show that critical points of this variational problem are hypersurfaces for which the quotient of \(S_{r+1}\) and \(S_1\) is a constant. It is also shown that, in case \(S_1\) is positive and the surrounding space is the Euclidean space, a critical immersion is stable if and only if \(M\) is a sphere immersed in the Euclidean space as a totally umbilical hypersurface. Similar results are also obtained in case \(M\) is an hypersurface contained in the hyperbolic space or contained in an open hemisphere of the unit sphere.