Extrinsic geometry of strongly parabolic multidimensional submanifolds (Q4232018)

This is a survey article on strongly parabolic submanifolds. For surfaces in \(E^3\), this class of surfaces is related to the class of Riemannian metrics on surfaces which have nonnegative, nonpositive or zero Gauss curvature. In a certain sense the local converse is also valid. However, in higher dimensions there exist no such close relationships between the two classes, and geometry divides into two branches: Riemannian geometry and the geometry of imbedded multidimensional surfaces in various ambient spaces. In this survey, the author gives a description of certain classes of submanifolds of arbitrary codimension that is analogous to the class of parabolic surfaces in \(E^3.\) The author first provides some results on the affine classification of points on imbedded submanifolds of \(E^n,\) in particular when the index of relative nullity is zero. A submanifold is called strongly \(k\)-parabolic if the index of relative nullity \(\mu\geq k\) at every point. Without additional assumptions, however, a complete \(k\)-parabolic submanifold is not necessarily a cylinder with \(k\)-dimensional rulings. The author presents many results concerning conditions which imply that a submanifold of \(E^n\) is cylindrical. Results on strongly parabolic submanifolds in pseudo-Riemannian spaces of constant curvature are also given as well as the relationship with minimal surfaces.