Skew loops and quadric surfaces

DOI10.1007/PL00012441MaRDI QIDQ1864138zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Mohammad Ghomi, Bruce Solomon

Publication date 17 March 2003

Published in Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0205222

zbMATH Keywords

closed curvequadricskew looptantrix

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convex sets in (3) dimensions (including convex surfaces) (52A15) Curves in Euclidean and related spaces (53A04) Surfaces in Euclidean and related spaces (53A05) Global surface theory (convex surfaces à la A. D. Aleksandrov) (53C45)

Abstract: A skew loop is a closed curve without parallel tangent lines. We prove: The only complete surfaces in euclidean 3-space with a point of positive curvature and no skew loops are the quadrics. In particular, ellipsoids are the only closed surfaces without skew loops. We also prove results about skew loops on cylinders and positively curved surfaces.

Review text

A skew loop is a closed space curve without parallel tangent lines. The authors prove: The only complete \(C^2\) surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with a point of positive Gauss curvature which contain no \(C^2\) skew loops are the quadrics (Theorem 1.1), in particular: ellipsoids are the only closed \(C^2\) surfaces immersed in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) which admit no \(C^2\) skew loops; on the other hand: Any cylinder with a strictly convex asymmetric \(C^2\) base contains a skew loop with nonvanishing curvature (Prop. 4.1). Theorem 1.1 is proved by a sequence of intermediate results: every \(C^2\) loop on the sphere \(S^2\) is regularly homotopic in \(S^2\) to its own tantrix; positively curved surfaces admit no skew figure-eights; convex quadrics have no skew loops; surfaces without skew loops have symmetric local cross sections. By a result of W. Blaschke, the last property characterizes the quadrics, and thus gives Theorem 1.1.

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Cited in

(12)

• Central figure-8 cross-cuts make surfaces cylindrical
• Introducing totally nonparallel immersions
• Tangent lines, inflections, and vertices of closed curves
• No skew branes on non-degenerate hyperquadrics
• Skew loops in flat tori
• Totally skew embeddings of manifolds
• Surfaces with central convex cross-sections
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2020264 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 827362 (Why is no real title available?)
• Nonexistence of skew loops on ellipsoids
• Existence and nonexistence of skew branes
• Embeddings with multiple regularity

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