Conformally flat hypersurfaces in real space forms with least tension (Q1884561)

The authors determine completely the classification of all ``ideal'' immersions of \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifolds as conformally flat hypersurfaces in \((n+1)\)-dimensional real space forms \(M^{n+1}(c)\) of constant curvature \(c\) where \(c=0\), \(c>0\) or \(c<0\). The research about ideal immersions has been started by the first author and since then a lot of work has been done by him, his co-workers aud other researchers. It all turns around the question: which are the ``best'' immersions of a manifold \(M\) among all possible isometric immersions in a manifold \(N\)? Such an immersion is defined by B. Y. Chen by using newly discovered intrinsic invariants by him, which are linked to extrinsic data such as the squared mean curvature. It is called an ideal immersion and this means, in variational terms, that it is a stable critical point of the total squared mean curvature within the class of all isometric immersions. In the first part of the paper, the authors provide the material which is necessary to understand the determination of the complete classification. It contains the needed material and results from geometry about ``ideal immersion theory'' and also a survey-like section about a series of special functions from analysis which are used extensively in the explicit description of the immersions. The second part contains the detailed classification for the cases \(c=0\), \(c>0\) and \(c<0\) separately.