Projective surfaces and pre-normalized Blaschke immersions of codimension two (Q2820182)

The authors consider lifts of surfaces in real projective three-space \(\mathbb{P}^3\) as two-dimensional surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^4\) by interpreting homogeneous coordinates as affine coordinates in \(\mathbb{R}^4\). There are two main theorems: The first states that any indefinite projective surface (a surface admitting a net of asymptotic lines) has a local lift as a minimal pre-normalized Blaschke immersion, that is, an immersion with rather special Gauss-Weingarten equations that is extremal for the integral of the volume form. The second theorem refers to lifts of the above type and states that, in addition, the Einstein condition (Ricci tensor is a real multiple of the affine fundamental form) can be satisfied if and only if the projective surface is applicable to an affine sphere. This means that certain lifts of projective surface and an affine sphere satisfy partial differential equations with equal coefficients.