Geodesics and submanifold structures in conformal geometry

Abstract: A conformal structure on a manifold

M^{n}

induces natural second order conformally invariant operators, called M"obius and Laplace structures, acting on specific weight bundles of

M

, provided that

n g e 3

. By extending the notions of M"obius and Laplace structures to the case of surfaces and curves, we develop here the theory of extrinsic conformal geometry for submanifolds, find tensorial invariants of a conformal embedding, and use these invariants to characterize various forms of geodesic submanifolds.

Review text

In the work under review, the author extends the notions of Möbius and Laplace structures, introduced in [\textit{D. M. J. Calderbank}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 504, 37--53 (1998; Zbl 0909.53029)], on a conformal manifold \(M^n\) to the case of curves and surfaces. By doing this, in Section 4 the author develops a theory of extrinsic conformal geometry and finds tensorial invariants of a conformal embedding (such as the trace-free fundamental form, the curvature of the normal bundle, and the mixed and the relative Schouten-Weyl tensors). Finally, the author introduces some particular classes of conformal submanifolds (such as totally umbilic, weakly geodesic, and strongly geodesic), show that these classes satisfy certain implications and can be characterized by the vanishing of some of the above mentioned tensorial invariants (Section 5).

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