Willmore surfaces and Hopf tori in homogeneous 3-manifolds (Q2673435)

Classifying the immersed closed surfaces of constant curvatures in space forms is a classical problem in geometry. The homogeneous spaces are natural generalizations of the space forms, and the simply connected three-dimensional homogeneous spaces have been classified. The main purpose of the paper under review is to obtain some classification results on immersed closed surfaces in the homogeneous space \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) which has isometric group of dimension \(4\). A particular case is \(\tau\neq 0, \kappa>0\), and in this case \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) is a Berger sphere \(\mathbb{S}_b^3(\kappa,\tau)\). As the first result, the authors calculate the Euler-Lagrange equation for the Willmore functional of an immersed closed surface in \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\). Then they obtain a Simons-type integral inequality for Willmore surfaces, which are surfaces satisfying the Euler-Lagrange equation for the Willmore functional. In the case \(\kappa<2\tau^2\), the equality of this integral inequality is achieved if and only if \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) is a Berger sphere \(\mathbb{S}_b^3(\kappa,\tau)\) and the Willmore surface is either a Clifford torus or a Hopf torus. On the other hand, the authors study immersed closed surfaces in \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) with constant negative extrinsic curvature. They obtain two sharp integral inequalities and equality is obtained if \(\mathbb{E}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) is a Berger sphere \(\mathbb{S}_b^3(\kappa,\tau)\) and the surface is a Hopf torus.