Rotational elliptic Weingarten surfaces in \(\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{R}\) and the Hopf problem (Q6110815)

Hopf's theorem with respect to CMC surfaces guarantees that any immersed CMC sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) is a totally umbilical sphere, and the same result holds in each of \(\mathbb{S}^3\) and \(\mathbb{H}^3\). Hopf's theorem can be extended to elliptic Weingarten surfaces [\textit{H. Hopf}, Math. Nachr. 4, 232--249 (1951; Zbl 0042.15703); \textit{P. Hartman} and \textit{A. Wintner}, Am. J. Math. 76, 502--508 (1954; Zbl 0055.39601); \textit{S.-S. Chern}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 6, 783--786 (1955; Zbl 0067.13801); \textit{J. A. Gálvez} and \textit{P. Mira}, J. Differ. Geom. 116, No. 3, 459--480 (2020; Zbl 1468.53050)]. An analogue of Hopf's theorem holds for CMC spheres in \(\mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\) and \(\mathbb{H}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\): any immersed CMC sphere in each of these spaces is an embedded rotational sphere [\textit{U. Abresch} and \textit{H. Rosenberg}, Acta Math. 193, 141--174 (2004; Zbl 1078.53053); Mat. Contemp. 28, 1--28 (2005; Zbl 1118.53036)]. In \(\mathbb{H}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\), any immersed elliptic Weingarten sphere is also an embedded rotational sphere; in \(\mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\), if the canonical example of a class of elliptic Weingarten surfaces has bounded second fundamental form, then any immersed sphere in this class is a rotational sphere and congruent with the canonical example, while there exist elliptic Weingarten spheres with singularities [\textit{J. A. Gálvez} and \textit{P. Mira}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 773, 21--66 (2021; Zbl 1478.53107)]. In this paper, the author shows that any rotational uniformly elliptic Weingarten surface in \(\mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\) has bounded second fundamental form and no singularities (Theorem 4.1). She also shows that for a given class of uniformly elliptic Weingarten surfaces in \(\mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{R}\), there exists an immersed sphere in the class, which is rotational and unique up to congruence (Theorem 4.2).