Equiaffine structure on frontals (Q6912134)

Let \(M\) be a regular surface in \(\mathbb{R}^3\), an equiaffine structure on \(M\) is a torsion free affine connection, a parallel volume element and a shape operator associated to a transversal vector field on \(M\). The main purpose of this paper is to generalize previous concept to frontals. We recall that, given an open set \(\mathcal{U}\subset \mathbb{R}^2 \), a smooth map \(x:\mathcal{U} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^3\) is said to be a frontal if for all \(q\in \mathcal{U}\) there is a vector field \(n:\mathcal{U}_q \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^3\), where \(\mathcal{U}_q\) is an open set of \(\mathcal{U}\) containing \(q\), such that \(\vert\vert n\vert \vert =1\) and, for all \(u=(u_1,u_2)\in \mathcal{U}_q\) one has \N\[\N\langle x_{u_i}(u),n(u)\rangle =0\text{ for }i=1,2.\N\] \NThe author introduces the concept of equiaffine structures for frontals as well as the notion of Blaschke vector fields, then he characterizes frontals which admit a Blaschke vector field, providing examples. Finally the author generalizes to frontals the fundamental theorem of affine differential geometry for regular surfaces which asserts that, under some compatibility conditions, there exists a surface and an equiaffine transversal vector field with a given equiaffine structure.