Unique continuation property for biharmonic hypersurfaces in spheres (Q824393)

The unique continuation theorem for biharmonic maps (see [\textit{V. Branding} and \textit{C. Oniciuc}, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 51, No. 4, 603--621 (2019; Zbl 1458.58009)]) states that if two biharmonic maps agree on an open subset of their domain then they are identical on the whole domain. In particular, if a biharmonic map is harmonic on an open subset of the domain then it is harmonic on the whole domain. Applying these to biharmonic submanifolds (i.e., biharmonic isometric immersions), the last statement amounts claiming that a biharmonic submanifold is minimal on an open subset then the whole submanifold is minimal. The paper under review studies hypersurfaces in a sphere. First, the authors prove a unique continuation theorem in the following sense: if a proper biharmonic hypersurface in a sphere with shape operator \(A\) and the mean curvature function \(H\) satisfying \(|\nabla |A|^2|\le \alpha\,|\nabla H|\) for some non-negative function, and if it has constant mean curvature on an open connected subset, then it is a hypersurface of constant mean curvature. As applications, the authors of the paper also prove some rigidity results which support the conjecture that a biharmonic submanifold of a sphere has constant mean curvature.