Isometric deformations of isotropic surfaces (Q5964803)

The normal bundle of a substantial minimal surface \(g: L^2\to Q^{2n+1}\) lying in odd codimension splits along an open dense subset of \(L\) as an orthogonal sum of plane bundles, except the last one which is a line bundle. Being substantial means that the codimension cannot be reduced. These subbundles are spanned by the images of the higher fundamental forms. A substantial minimal surface \(g: L^2\to Q^{2n+1}\) is called isotropic if the curvature ellipses of any order but the highest one, that is, the images of the unit tangent circle under the higher fundamental forms, are circles at any point of the open dense subset. Of course, in codimension one any minimal surface is trivially isotropic. It is known that any substantial simply connected minimal surface \(g:L^2\to Q^{2n+1}\) allows a one-parameter associated family \(g_\theta: L^2\to Q^{2n+1}\), \(\theta\in S^1\), of isometric minimal immersions. The family is obtained by integrating the system of Gauss, Codazzi, and Ricci equations after rotating the second fundamental form with a constant angle while keeping fixed the normal bundle and connection. The members of the associated family are isotropic and never pairwise congruent, and there are no other isometric isotropic surfaces. The main result of the paper concerns the case of compact surfaces in \(S\). Theorem: Let \(g: L^2\to S^{2n+1}\) be an oriented isotropic surface. If \(L^2\) is compact, then there exist at most finitely many isometric isotropic immersions of \(L^2\) into \(S^{2n+1}\).