Cubic form methods and relative Tchebychev hypersurfaces (Q1360958)

Let \(x:M^n\longrightarrow {\mathcal A}^{n+1}\) be a non-degenerate hypersurface with relative normalization \(\{ Y,y\}\). The relative Tchebychev operator is \({\mathcal T}:=\nabla (h)T\), where \(T\) is the Tchebychev vector field, \(\nabla (h)\) the Levi-Civita connection for a Blaschke metric \(h\). If \(S\) is the relative Weingarten operator, then \(L:={\textstyle{\frac{1}{2}}}S-{\textstyle{\frac{n}{n+2}}} {\mathcal T}\) is an operator as a basic tool to introduce a new type of hypersurfaces. More precisely, the authors define a relative Tchebychev hypersurface as \(x\) satisfying \(L=\lambda h\), \(\lambda \in C^{\infty }(M)\). The main purpose of this paper is to study these hypersurfaces which extend the notion of affine spheres in equiaffine geometry and also that of centroaffine Tchebychev hypersurfaces. The authors characterize these hypersurfaces by symmetry properties of the covariant derivatives of the traceless part of the cubic form. Partial local and global classifications, in particular a generalization of the theorem of Blaschke and Deicke are given. To obtain these results, the authors use the derivation of second-order PDE's of Laplacian type for the traceless cubic form. They give examples to show that this class of hypersurfaces is surprisingly large. Estimates for the square of the norm of multilinear forms are obtained by refined techniques.