Totally umbilic surfaces in homogeneous 3-manifolds (Q1026417)

This paper studies umbilical surfaces in simply connected homogeneous Riemannian 3-manifolds whose isometry group is 4-dimensional. These spaces, denoted \({\mathbb M}^3(\kappa,\tau)\), fiber over surfaces of constant curvature \(\kappa\) and form a 1-parameter family parametrized by the bundle curvature \(\tau\). When \(\tau=0\), these are Riemannian products and when \(\kappa-4\tau^2=0\), these are space forms and hence have a 6-dimensional isometry group. Thus for \(\tau\neq 0\) one has the Berger spheres, the Heisenberg group or \(\widetilde{PSL_2({\mathbb R })}\). The authors first prove that there are no umbilical surfaces in \({\mathbb M}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) with \(\tau\neq 0\) and \(\kappa-4\tau^2\neq 0\). They then give a complete classification of complete rotational umbilical surfaces in \(S^2\times{\mathbb R }\). For the hyperbolic case, \({\mathbb H}^2\times{\mathbb R }\), the authors consider not only rotational surfaces but also those invariant by a family of parabolic or hyperbolic isometries. The paper also considers the Lie group \(Sol\) whose isometry group is 3-dimensional. The authors show that up to ambient isometries, there exist only two complete umbilical surfaces; one of them is totally geodesic. Finally as an application of their work, the authors prove that any conformal diffeomorphism of \({\mathbb H}^2\times{\mathbb R }\), \(S^2\times{\mathbb R }\) and \(Sol\) is an isometry.