Conformal hypersurfaces with the same third fundamental form (Q2580935)

In this paper, \(M^n\) is an \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold and \(f:M^n\to {\mathbb R}^{n+k}\) is a conformal immersion. The author is interested in the following problem: Under what conditions does there exist another conformal immersion \(\tilde{f}:M^n\to {\mathbb R}^{n+k}\) such that the third fundamental forms (in the sense of Obata) of \(f\) and \(\tilde{f}\) coincide? The author calls such an immersion \(\tilde{f}\) a \(T\)-deformation of \(f\), and of course he is interested in non-trivial \(T\)-deformations, that is, deformations that are not obtained from conformal diffeomorphisms of the ambient Euclidean space. In the paper under review, the author is more specifically interested in \(T\)-deformations of functions \(f\) that parametrize hypersurfaces in \({\mathbb R}^{n+1}\). For \(n\geq 3\), he obtains a complete classification of such hypersurfaces. He shows in particular that there are plenty of \(T\)-deformable hypersurfaces that are not \(G\)-deformable. Here, a \(G\)-deformation is a deformation \(\tilde{f}\) whose Gauss map coincides with that of \(f\), up to a congruence induced by a congruence of \({\mathbb R}^{n+1}\). On the contrary, in the case \(n=2\), the author proves that if \(f, \tilde{f}:M^2\to {\mathbb R}^{3}\) are conformal immersions, then if \(\tilde{f}\) is a \(T\)-deformation of \(f\), then \(\tilde{f}\) is also a \(G\)-deformation of \(f\). The results of this paper generalize results by M. Dajczer and by E. S. Vergasta.