Affine hypersurfaces with parallel cubic forms (Q910723)

We first investigate the symmetry properties of the tensors \(\nabla C\) and \(\nabla^ 2C\), where \(\nabla\) is the induced affine connection and C is the cubic form of a nondegenerate affine hypersurface \(M^ n\) in \({\mathbb{R}}^{n+1}\). In particular, we study hypersurfaces with parallel cubic form, i.e. \(\nabla C=0\). In the case \(n=2\), this condition is known to characterize a Cayley surface [the second author and \textit{U. Pinkall}, Math. Z. 195, 165-178 (1987; Zbl 0629.53012)]. We obtain a certain class of more general affine surfaces and hypersurfaces. On the other hand, for an affine hypersurface \(M^ n\), \(n\geq 3\) the condition \(\nabla R=0\) (i.e. parallel curvature tensor field) implies that \(M^ n\) is an improper affine hypersphere or a quadric [\textit{P. Verheyen} and \textit{L. Verstraelen}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 93, 101-105 (1985; Zbl 0535.53007)]. We provide a generalization of this result by proving that the condition \(\nabla^ 2R=0\) implies \(\nabla R=0\) for an affine hypersurface. Recall that, for a Riemannian manifold, the condition \(\nabla^ 2R=0\) (in fact, \(\nabla^ kR=0\) for some integer k) implies \(\nabla R=0\) but that such a result does not hold for an affine connection in general. Our study shows the common background for these results on the covariant differentials of the cubic form and those of the curvature tensor field.