Flat approximations of hypersurfaces along curves (Q2326784)

It is well known that for a surface \(M\) in Euclidean three-space and a smooth curve \(\gamma\) on \(M\) there exists, under mild regularity assumptions, a unique developable surface through \(\gamma\) that shares the tangent planes along \(\gamma\) with \(M\). In this paper, the authors generalize this existence and uniqueness result to flat approximations of hypersurfaces \(M\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\) along a surface curve \(\gamma\). More precisely, the approximating hypersurface \(H\) is supposed to admit a foliation by open subsets of \((m-1)\)-dimensional planes with the same tangent space in all of their points (``flat'' or locally isometric to Euclidean space) and to share tangent hyperplanes along \(\gamma\) with \(M\). The curve \(\gamma\) should never be parallel to an asymptotic direction of \(M\). Uniqueness is to be understood in the sense that two flat approximations \(H_1\), \(H_2\) coincide on an open subset through \(\gamma\).