Higher order parallel surfaces in Bianchi-Cartan-Vranceanu spaces (Q927819)

In this paper a full classification of higher order parallel surfaces and a full local classification of totally umbilical surfaces in three dimensional homogeneous spaces with four dimensional isometry group, i.e., the Bianchi-Cartan-Vranceanu family are given. The Bianchi-Cartan-Vranceanu space \(\tilde{M}^3(\kappa,\tau)\) is defined as the following open subset of \(\mathbb R^3\): \[ \left\{(x,y,z)\in \mathbb{R}^3\left | 1+{{\kappa}\over{4}}(x^2+y^2)>0\right\}\right. \] equipped with the metric \[ ds^2={{dx^2+dy^2}\over{(1+{{\kappa}\over 4}(x^2+y^2))^2}}+\left(dz+\tau{{{ydx-xdy}\over{1+{{\kappa}\over 4}(x^2+y^2)}}}\right)^2. \]