Generalized immersions and the rank of the second fundamental form (Q2373550)

The authors develop the idea of a generalised immersion of an \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) into a manifold \(N\) as an ordinary immersion, of \(M\) into the Grassmannian \(\text{Gr}_n(TN) \) which is annihilated by contact. For such immersions he develops the notion of the generalised second fundamental form. In case that \(M\) is immersed in \(N\) in a normal way, the classical second fundamental form is the generalised second fundamental form of the prolongation. Next, they suppose that \(N\) is a real space form and introduce the notion of an \((n-k)\)-developable generalised immersion. They show that this is equivalent with the fact that the rank of the generalised second fundamental form is at most \(k\). The authors also investigate, in case that the rank of the second fundamental form is less then \(n\), the leaves of the corresponding natural foliation. In the final section the authors conclude with some explicit examples.