Finite type ruled manifolds shaped on spherical submanifolds (Q912411)

Most papers about Euclidean submanifolds of finite type deal with compact ones. In this case the finite type condition can be characterized by giving a polynomial in the Laplacian of the mean curvature vector field, which turn out to be only a necessary condition when the submanifold is non compact. Frequently, the submanifolds constructed over a given manifold are non compact, so that the following problem arises in a natural way: ``To what extent the finite character of a Euclidean submanifold affects the finite type condition of a manifold shaped on it?'' In this paper we construct non compact ruled manifolds \(M^+\) on a certain class of compact spherical submanifolds M and prove that \(M^+\) is of finite type k if and only if it is a generalized cylinder \(M\times {\mathbb{R}}\) of null k-type constructed on a spherical submanifold M of type \(k-1\).