Umbilics of surfaces in the Lorentz-Minkowski 3-space (Q6078332)

Denoting by \(\mathbb L^3\) the Lorentz-Minkowski \(3\)-space of signature (+ + \(-\)), an immersion \(f:U \rightarrow \mathbb L^3\) defined on a neighborhood of the origin in \(\mathbb R^2\) is said to be space-like, respectively time-like, if its induced metric is Riemannian, respectively Lorentzian. An \textit{umbilic} is a point, where the shape operator \(A_f\) of \(f\) is a scalar multiple of the identity transformation. If the eigen-equation has a double root but \(A_f\) is not diagonalizable, the point is called \textit{quasi-umbilic}. Quasi-umbilics can only appear on time-like surfaces. The present paper is devoted to the study of curvature line flows of surfaces in \(\mathbb L^3\), so the authors only consider surfaces whose principal curvatures (eigenvalues of \(A_f\)) are real (in case of time-like surfaces this is not necessarily the case). It is shown, that the local behavior of the curvature line flows of the germ of a space-like surface in \(\mathbb L^3\) is essentially the same as that of a surface in Euclidean space. Defining the index of an isolated umbilic on a given regular surface to be the index of one of the curvature line flows of the surface at that point, the following is shown in the case of time-like surfaces: The indices of isolated umbilics that are not the accumulation points of quasi-umbilics are always equal to zero. Furthermore, when quasi-umbilics accumulate, there exist countably many germs of time-like surfaces which admit an isolated umbilic with non-zero indices.