ON A CHARACTERIZATION OF A SURFACE OF REVOLUTION WITH MANY POLES (Q4039154)

In this article, a surface of revolution means a complete Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) homeomorphic to \(R^ 2\) which admits a point \(p\), called vertex of \(M\), such that the Gaussian curvature is constant on \(S_ p(t) = \{q\in M, d(p,q)=t\}\) for each \(t>0\), where \(d\) denotes the Riemannian distance function of \((M,g)\). A point \(q\in M\) is called a pole if the differential \(d\exp_ q\) of the exponential map \(\exp_ q\) on \(M_ q\) is injective at each vector of \(M_ q\), where \(M_ q\) denotes the tangent space of \(M\) at \(q\). The main theorem proved is the following: Let \((M,g)\) be a surface of revolution with vertex \(p\). Then the set of poles on \(M\) is the closed ball centered at \(p\), with radius \(r(M) = \sup\{d(p,q)\); \(q\) is a pole\}. Furthermore \(r(M)\) is nonzero if and only if \(M\) satisfies \[ \int^ \infty_ 1 L^{-2}(t)dt < \infty\quad \text{and}\quad \liminf_{t\to \infty}L(t) > 0 \] where \(L(t)\) denotes the length of \(S_ p(t)\).