Parallel surfaces in affine 4-space (Q1429143)

In a series of results about the classification of linearly full affine surface immersions \(x: M^2\to \mathbb{R}^m\) \((m\geq 2)\) with vanishing covariant derivative \(\nabla h\) of its (transversally valued) second fundamental form \(h\) the case of \(m= 4\) together with a 1-degenerate \(M^2\), i.e. a Burstin-Mayer tensor field \[ h_{\{X_1, X_2\}}(X, Y):= \textstyle{{1\over 2}}(\text{det}(X_1, X_2, D_{X_1} X, D_{X_2}Y)+ \text{det}(X_1, X_2, D_{X_1} Y, D_{X_2}X)) \] (\(X, Y\in\Gamma(TM^2)\), \(\{X_1, X_2\}\) arbitrary basis of \(\Gamma(TM^2)\)) of rank one was still open. The authors fill this gap by proving that every such immersion must be a ruled surface of one of three very special types. The proof of this fact consists of the use of Cartan's moving frames and suitable adaptions of these frames together with the parametrization.