Biconservative surfaces in the 4-dimensional Euclidean sphere (Q6046908)

The paper under review studies non-CMC biconservative surfaces with parallel normalized mean curvature vector field (PNMC) in a Euclidean sphere. Here, a biconservative surface (or more generally submanifold) is an isometric immersion with tangential bitension field vanishing identically. Among the main results, the authors (1) Give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a biconservative immersion \(M^2\to S^4\) with PNMC; (2) Obtain a local expression of a biconservative immersion \(M^2\to S^4\) with PNMC as image in \(\mathbb{R}^5\); (3) Prove that if a biconservative immersion \(M^2\to S^n,\;n\ge 5\) with PNMC and the rank of the first normal bundle is at least \(2\), then the immersion factors through \(M^2\to S^4\) followed by a totally geodesic embedding \(S^4\to S^n\).