Harmonic conformal flows on manifolds of constant curvature (Q2464686)

The paper studies conformal flows on Riemannian manifolds. Let \((M,g)\) be a connected Riemannian manifold of dimension \(n+1\). If \(V\) is a smooth unit vector field on \(M\) the energy of the 1-dimensional foliation \({\mathcal L}\) defined by it is defined as \[ E({\mathcal L}) = \tfrac{1}{2} \int_M | \nabla V | \mu, \] where \(\nabla\) is the Levi-Civita connection of \(g\) and the associated volume form. The foliation \({\mathcal L}\) is harmonic if it is a critical foliation for the energy functional under variations of the foliation \({\mathcal L}\). The main result of the paper implies that a conformal flow on a manifold of constant curvature is harmonic iff it is isometric. It is a generalization of the author's result for Riemannian flows.