Singular genuine rigidity (Q784195)

The paper under review concerns the theory of rigidity of submanifolds in Riemannian manifolds. The main problem studied is whether an isometric immersion of a given Riemannian manifold into a Riemannian space of constant curvature is unique up to rigid motions of the ambient space. Motivated by the classical theorems of \textit{R. Sacksteder} on rigidity of Euclidean hypersurfaces [J. Math. Mech. 11, 929--939 (1962; Zbl 0108.34702)] and by numerous results of M. Dajczer and the first author with coauthors (for example, see [the first author and \textit{G. M. de Freitas}, Commun. Anal. Geom. 25, No. 4, 751--797 (2017; Zbl 1380.53059)]), the authors introduce a novel concept of singular genuine rigidity, which generalizes the notions of rigidity and genuine rigidity of submanifolds and allows to obtain new results on rigidity of submanifolds as well as to unify the known ones. By definition, a pair of isometric immersions \(f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+p}\) and \(\hat f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+q}\) singularly extends isometrically if there are an embedding \(j: M^n \to N^{n+s}\), \(s>0\), and isometric maps \(F: N^{n+s}\to \mathbb R^{n+p}\), \(\hat F: N^{n+s}\to \mathbb R^{n+q}\) such that \(f = F\circ j\), \(\hat f = \hat F\circ j\) and the set of points where \(F\) and \(\hat F\) fail to be immersions is contained in \(j(M)\). Accordingly, an isometric immersion \(f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+p}\) is said to be singularly genuinely rigid in \(\mathbb R^{n+q}\) if, for any isometric immersion \(\hat f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+q}\), there exists an open dense subset \(U\subset M^n\) such that \(f\vert_U\) and \(\hat f\vert_U\) singularly extend isometrically. Thus, the novel concepts admit the presence of certain mild singularities in submanifolds. This simplifies the studying of rigidity problems and allows to prove the following global theorems: Theorem 1. Let \(f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+p}\) and \(\hat f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+q}\) be isometric immersions of a compact Riemannian manifold \(M^n\) with \(p+q < n\). Then, along each connected component of an open dense subset of \(M^n\), either \(f\) and \(\hat f\) singularly extend isometrically, or \(f\) and \(\hat f\) are mutually \(d\)-ruled, with \(d\geq n-p-q +3\). Here \(f\) is called \(d\)-ruled if there is a totally geodesic distribution of rank \(d\) in \(TM\), whose leaves are mapped by \(f\) to \(d\)-dimensional affine subspaces of \(\mathbb R^{n+p}\). Moreover, \(f\) and \(\hat f\) are mutually \(d\)-ruled if they are \(d\)-ruled with the same totally geodesic distribution of rank \(d\) in \(TM\). Theorem 2. Any compact isometrically immersed submanifold \(M^n\) of \(\mathbb R^{n+p}\) is singularly genuinely rigid in \(\mathbb R^{n+q}\) for \(q<\min\{ 5, n\} - p\). Theorem 3. Let \(M^n\) be a compact manifold whose \(k\)-th Pontrjagin class satisfies \([ p_k ] \not= 0\) for some \(k > \frac{3}{4} (p+q-3)\). Then any analytic immersion \(f: M^n\to \mathbb R^{n+p}\) with the induced metric is singularly genuinely rigid in \(\mathbb R^{n+q}\) in the \(C^\infty\)-category. Local results are derived, too, for instance, the following statement is proved: Theorem 4. Any isometrically immersed submanifold \(M^n\) of \(\mathbb R^{n+p}\) with positive Ricci curvature is singularly genuinely rigid in \(\mathbb R^{n+q}\) for every \(q < n-p \). Moreover, spherical submanifolds are discussed and analogues of Theorems 1 and 2 are proved. Theorem 5. Let \(f: M^n\to \mathbb S^{n+p}\) and \(\hat f: M^n\to \mathbb S^{n+q}\) be isometric immersions of a complete Riemannian manifold \(M^n\) with \(p+q < n-\mu_n\). Then, along each connected component of an open dense subset of \(M^n\), either \(f\) and \(\hat f\) singularly extend isometrically, or \(f\) and \(\hat f\) are mutually \(d\)-ruled, with \(d\geq n-p-q +3\). Here \(\mu_n=\max\{ k : \rho (n-k)\geq k+1 \}\), where \(\rho(m)-1\) is the maximum number of pointwise linearly-independent vector fields on \(\mathbb S^{m-1}\). Theorem 6. Any complete isometrically immersed submanifold \(M^n\) of \(\mathbb S^{n+p}\) is singularly genuinely rigid in \(\mathbb S^{n+q}\) for \(q\leq 3-p\) if \(4\leq n \leq 7\) or \(q\leq 4-p\) if \( n \geq 8\).