Spectral geometry of minimal surfaces in the sphere (Q1095419)

Let \(x: M\to S^ n\) be a full isometric minimal immersion of a compact surface into the unit n-sphere. Denote by f the second standard immersion of \(S^ n\) into a Euclidean space. The main result of this article is to prove the following theorem. The immersion \(\phi =f\circ x\) is of 3-type in the sense of the reviewer [Total mean curvature and submanifolds of finite type (1984; Zbl 0537.53049)] if and only if either M has constant curvature 1/6 and x is a Veronese surface in \(S^ 6\) or M is flat and x is an equilateral torus in \(S^ 5\). The authors also derive some eigenvalue inequalities for minimal surfaces in a sphere involving the first three eigenvalues.