Stochastically complete submanifolds with parallel mean curvature vector field in a Riemannian space form (Q6172849)

A Riemannian manifold \(M\) is said to be stochastically complete if, for some \((x,t)\in M\times(0,+\infty)\), the heat kernel \(p(x,y,t)\) of the Laplace-Beltrami operator satisfies the conservation property \[\int_Mp(x,y,t)d\mu(y)=1.\] From the probabilistic viewpoint, stochastical completeness is the property of a stochastic process to have infinite life time. In this paper, the authors deal with stochastically complete submanifolds \(M^n\) immersed with nonzero parallel mean curvature vector field in a Riemannian space form \(\mathbb Q^{n+p}_c\) of constant sectional curvature \(c\in\{-1,0,1\}\). In this setting, they apply a crucial result due to \textit{S. Pigola} et al. [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 131, No. 4, 1283--1288 (2003; Zbl 1015.58007)], which asserts that stochastic completeness is equivalent to the validity of a weak form of the Omori-Yau maximum principle jointly with a suitable Simons type formula. Then they show that either such a submanifold \(M^n\) must be totally umbilic or it holds a sharp estimate for the norm of its total umbilicity tensor, with equality if and only if the submanifold is isometric to an open piece of a hyperbolic cylinder \(\mathbb H^1(-\sqrt{1+r^2})\times\mathbb S^{n-1}(r)\), when \(c=-1\), a circular cylinder \(\mathbb R\times\mathbb S^{n-1}(r)\), when \(c=0\), and a Clifford torus \(\mathbb S^1(\sqrt{1-r^2})\times\mathbb S^{n-1}(r)\), when \(c = 1\).