A new class of austere submanifolds (Q6598518)

A submanifold \(M^n\) of a Riemannian manifold is said to be austere if all symmetric polynomials of odd degree in the principal curvatures with respect to any normal vector vanish, or equivalently, the nonzero principal curvatures in every normal direction occur in oppositely signed pairs. This concept was introduced by \textit{R. Harvey} and \textit{H. B. Lawson} [Acta Math. 148, 47--157 (1982; Zbl 0584.53021)] for constructing special Lagrangian submanifolds in \(\mathbb{C}^N\). Obviously, austerity implies minimality, and these two concepts are equivalent if and only if \(n=1\) or \(2\). Austere Euclidean submanifolds can be obtained from holomorphic isometric immersions of Kähler submanifolds, Bryant's twisted cones over minimal surfaces, Bryant's generalized helicoids, cones over austere spherical submanifolds (which include the infinitely many isoparametric focal submanifolds), etc. Similar to Bryant's three dimensional parametric construction, \textit{M. Dajczer} and \textit{L. A. Florit} [Ill. J. Math. 45, No. 3, 735--755 (2001; Zbl 0988.53004)] gave parametric construction of austere Euclidean submanifolds of rank two of any dimension. In [\textit{J. Ge} and \textit{Y. Zhou}, ``Austere Matrices, Austere Submanifolds and Dupin Hypersurfaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2302.06105}], the reviewer and Yi Zhou constructed three families of new austere spherical submanifolds (we'll give a brief survey on recent progress on austere submanifolds in [\textit{G. Tian} (ed.) et al., Surveys in geometric analysis -- Volume 6, 2022. Beijing: Science Press; Les Ulis: EDP Sciences (2024; Zbl 07929554)]).\N\NThe authors, applying their own previous results in [Commun. Anal. Geom. 26, No. 4, 699--721 (2018; Zbl 1397.53014)], characterize in an explicit parametric form a new class of austere submanifolds \(M^n\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) of dimension \(n \geq 4\) and rank \(\rho = 4\). This new class of austere submanifolds is of particular interest because they are given in terms of a Weierstrass type parametrization depending on \(n\) holomorphic functions on a domain. The characterization is given by an elegant correspondence between \(2\)-isotropic substantial surfaces \(g:L^2\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) and the associated immersions \(F_g: M^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+2}\) which turn out to be austere \((n-2)\)-ruled submanifolds with complete rulings that have rank \(\rho= 4\) on an open dense subset of \(M^n\), where \(M^n\) is the subbundle of the normal bundle of \(L^2\) orthogonal to its first normal bundle. Another remarkable result is that the correspondence above also characterizes when the austere submanifold \(M^n\) is Kähler (if and only if \(g\) is holomorphic).\N\NThis paper is an important reference for austere submanifolds as well as for \(2\)-isotropic surfaces.