Existence of generalized totally umbilic 2-spheres in perturbed 3-spheres

DOI10.1093/IMRN/RNT155zbMATH Open1303.53079arXiv1303.6345OpenAlexW1971431939MaRDI QIDQ2931014FDOQ2931014

Authors: Alessandro Carlotto, Andrea Mondino 

Publication date: 21 November 2014

Published in: IMRN. International Mathematics Research Notices (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: It was recently shown by R. Souam and E. Toubiana that the (non constantly curved) Berger spheres do not contain totally umbilic surfaces. Nevertheless in this article we show, by perturbative arguments, that all analytic metrics sufficiently close to the round metric $g_0$ on $mathbb{S}^3$ possess extsl{generalized} totally umbilic 2-spheres, namely critical points of the conformal Willmore functional $in{t}_{Sigma}|A^{c}irc{|}^2,dm{u}_{gamma}$. The same is true in the smooth setting provided a suitable non-degeneracy condition on the traceless Ricci tensor holds. The proof involves a gluing process of two different finite-dimensional reduction schemes, a sharp asymptotic analysis of the functional on perturbed umbilic spheres of small radius and a quantitative Schur-type Lemma in order to treat the cases when the traceless Ricci tensor of the perturbation is degenerate but not identically zero. For left-invariant metrics on $SU(2)congmathbb{S}^3$ our result implies the existence of uncountably many distinct Willmore spheres.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6345

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zbMATH Keywords

gluingtraceless Ricci tensorWillmore spheresconformal Willmore functional

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Differential geometry of immersions (minimal, prescribed curvature, tight, etc.) (53C42)

Cited In (2)

• Generalised Umbilics on Embedded Spheres
• Global Conformal Invariants of Submanifolds

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