Deformations of hypersurfaces in equiaffine differential geometry (Q1104557)

The authors analyze infinitesimal normal deformations in equiaffine hypersurface theory, proving local and global rigidity results. Let \(x: M\to {\mathcal A}\) be a hypersurface immersion of the differentiable, connected, oriented manifold M into the real affine space \({\mathcal A}\), and let \(x_ t: M\to {\mathcal A}\) be a normal deformation of x. Lemma. An infinitesimal normal deformation is trivial iff the first variation of x, \(\delta x=dx_ t/dt|_{t=0}\), satisfies \(\delta x=cx+b\), where \(c\in R\) and \(b\in V\) \(=\) the underlying vector space of \({\mathcal A}.\) The main tool of the work consists in providing existence and uniqueness for a system of partial differential equations involving some of the geometrical objects associated with x: the equiaffine metric G, the cubic form A and the symmetrized equiaffine shape (Weingarten) operator B. Theorem A. Let \(x: M\to {\mathcal A}\) be a hypersurface immersion such that x(M) is locally strongly convex. Then any infinitesimal equiaffine normal deformation which keeps the equiaffine metric is trivial. Theorem B. Any infinitesimal equiaffine normal deformation of a locally strongly convex hypersurface immersion with regular equiaffine Weingarten operator \(\tilde B\) which keeps the equiaffine volume and \(\tilde B\) is trivial. Finally, the paper includes two versions of a deformation lemma (for hypersurfaces with and without boundary) which imply further global rigidity results for infinitesimal normal deformations.