A characterization of Weingarten surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space (Q609402)

The study of Weingarten surfaces is a classical topic in differential geometry, as introduced by Weingarten in 1861. A surface \(S\) in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space \(\mathbb R^3\) is called a Weingarten surface if there is some relation between its two principal curvatures \(k_1\) and \(k_2\), that is, if there is a smooth function \(F\) of two variables such that \(F(k_1,k_2)=0\). In particular, if \(K\) and \(H\) denote the Gauss and the mean curvature of \(S\), respectively, the identity \(F(k_1,k_2)=0\) implies a relation \(\Gamma(K,H)=0\). We need to know some examples of surfaces and relations between their curvatures as models for classifications. In this paper, the authors give a new characterization of the Weingarten condition for surfaces in \(\mathbb H^3\), which means to classify the totally null surfaces in L(\(\mathbb H^3\)) and recover the well known holomorphic constructions of flat and CMC 1 surfaces in \(\mathbb H^3\). Moreover, in this paper, they study 2-dimensional submanifolds of the space L(\(\mathbb H^3\)) of oriented geodesics of hyperbolic 3-space, endowed with the canonical neutral structure. Then, the authors prove that the induced metric on a Lagrangian surface in L(\(\mathbb H^3\)) has zero Gauss curvature iff the orthogonal surfaces in \(\mathbb H^3\) are Weingarten.