Submitted:
25 August 2023
Posted:
01 September 2023
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Abstract
We obtain some generalised Minkowski-type integral formulas for compact Riemannian (resp. spacelike) hypersurfaces in Riemannian (resp. Lorentzian) manifolds admitting an arbitrary vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where the ambient space is Lorentzian. Some of these formulas generalize existing formulas in the case of conformal and Killing vector fields. We apply these integral formulas to obtain interesting results concerning the characterization of such hypersurfaces in some particular cases such as when the ambient space is Einstein admitting an arbitrary (in particular, conformal or Killing) vector field, and when the hypersurface has constant mean curvature.
Keywords:
Minkowski-type integral formulas
; Conformal and Killing vector fields
; Ricci and scalar curvatures
; Constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces
; Minimal and maximal hypersurfaces.
MSC: 53A10; 53C40; 53C42; 53C65
1. Introduction
In 1903 H. Minkowski published in [16] his two famous integral formulas for compact surfaces in three dimensional Euclidean space. After that, many authors obtained integral formulas that generalized the two Minkowski formulas to hypersurfaces in Euclidean space and then in a general Riemannian manifold that admits a Killing or conformal vector field. For instance, in [11] and [12], C. C. Hsiung obtained generalized integral formulas of Minkowsi type for embedded hypersurfaces in Riemannian manifolds (see also [13]). In [14] and [15], Y. Katsurada generalized the work of Hsiung and derived some integral formulas of Minkowski type that are valid for Einstein manifolds and used them to prove that given a hypersurface with constant mean curvature in an Einstein Riemannian manifold , and given a homothetic vector field of such that the inner product of and the normal to M does not change sign and does not vanish on M, then M is necessarily umbilical. In [19], K. Yano obtained three integral formulas of Minkowski type for hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature in a Riemannian manifold admitting a homothetic vector field. Then, over time, several integral formulas of Minkowski type appeared in literature that were used to obtain rigidity results for isometrically immersed hypersurfaces in pseudo-Riemannian manifolds admitting a conformal vector filed. In [6] and [7] (resp. [8]), L. J. Alias, A. Romero, and M. Sanchez obtained the first and second integral formulas of Minkowski type for compact spacelike hypersurfaces in a generalized Robertson–Walker spacetime (resp. conformally stationary spacetime), and applied them to the study of compact spacelike hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature. Two years later, in [17], S. Montiel provided another proof of the first and second Minkowski formulas in the case where the ambient spacetime is equipped with a conformal timelike vector field. In 2003, L. J. Alias, A. Brasil JR, and A. G. Colares generalized in [2] the integral formulas obtained in [6,7,8] for spacelike hypersurfaces in conformally stationary spacetimes. See also [3] and [4].
The assumption that the ambient space admits a conformal vector field is inspired by the fact that the position vector field in Euclidean space is a closed conformal vector field (which in some references is called a concircular vector field). The importance of conforml vector fields comes from the use of conformal mappings as a mathematical tool in general relativity. In fact, although a conformal vector field does not leave the Einstein tensor invariant, its existence in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is a symmetry assumption for g that can be used (for example) to obtain exact solutions of Einstein’s equation.
Consider now an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold admitting a conformal vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian. Let be a connected -dimensional Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface into , and let denote the restriction of to Consider the function , where is an arbitrary vector field and N is a globally defined unit vector field normal to In the case where is Riemannian, L. J. Alias, M. Dajczer, and J. Ripoll gave in [5] an expression for the Laplacian in terms of the Ricci curvature of and the norm of the shape operator of . One year later, in 2008, A. Barros, A. Brasil, and A. Caminha obtained in [9] the analogous expression when is Lorentzian.
In 2010, A. L. Albujer, J. A. Aledo, and L. J. Alias gave in [1] an expression for in a slightly different way as given in [5] and [9]. Then, they used this expression to obtain a Minkowski-type integral formula for compact Riemannian and spacelike hypersurfaces, and applied this to deduce some interesting results concerning the characterization of compact Riemannian and spacelike hypersurfaces under certain hypotheses like the constancy of the mean curvature of the assumption that the ambient space is Einstein or a product space.
In this paper, we mainly wish to generalize previous results concerning Minkowski-type integral formulas for Riemannian (resp. spacelike) hypersurfaces in Riemannian (resp. Lorentzian) manifolds admitting an arbitrary vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian, and apply these integral forms to compact Riemannian and spacelike hypersurfaces in order to obtain interesting results concerning the characterization of such hypersurfaces in some particular cases, such as the ambient space is Einstein admitting an arbitrary (and in particular, a conformal Killing) vector field, or the hypersurface is minimal (resp. maximal) or has constant mean curvature.
In particular, we wish to work to generalize the results in [19] and [1] for any arbitrary Riemannian or spacelike hypersurface in any arbitrary ambient space admitting an arbitrary vector field. More precisely, given an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold admitting an arbitrary vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian, and given a connected -dimensional Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface into . Let denote the restriction of to M, and let N be a globally defined unit vector field normal to Of course, N is supposed to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian. Our first main goal in this paper is to give a useful expression for the Laplacian of the function in terms of the Ricci and scalar curvatures of the ambient space, the mean curvature of the hypersurface, and the tangent part of the restriction of the vector field to M. In the particular case where is a conformal (resp. Killing) vector field, our expression reduces to that obtained in [1] (resp. [19]). We will deduce from the generalized expression for different generalized Minkowski-type integral formulas valid for any Riemannian or spacelike hypersurface in any arbitrary Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold admitting an arbitrary vector field. We will, in particular, generalize an integral formula obtained in [1] in the case when is conformal to the case of an arbitrary vector field. We will also apply the obtained generalized Minkowski-type formulas to deduce interesting results concerning the characterization of Riemannian and spacelike hypersurfaces in some particular cases, such as the ambient space is Einstein admitting an arbitrary (and in particular, a conformal Killing) vector field, or the hypersurface has constant mean curvature.
2. Preliminaries
Let and let be a connected -dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold. In this paper, we adopt the opposite convention of that in [18] to define the Riemannian tensor. That is, the Riemannian tensor is defined here to be the tensor field given by
for all .
For every and every orthonormal basis of , the Ricci curvature tensor and the scalar curvature are, respectively, defined to be
for all
where
Throughout this paper, we will assume that is Riemannian (i.e. the metric g has index 0) which is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface into an -dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold that we assume to be Riemannian or Lorentzian (i.e. the metric has index 0 or 1). Let ∇ and denote the Levi-Civita connections on M and , respectively. Let and denote, respectively, the sets of all tangent vector fields on M and and let denote the set of all vector fields on We will use the two notations or to denote the value of a vector field X on a function f.
Let that we will assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian, and let denote its dual one form, that is, the one form given by , for every Let be the -tensor (viewed as an endomorphism) defined by
Write as usual
for all where L is the Lie derivative of the metric with respect to a
Let B and be the symmetric and skew-symmetric parts of In other words, we have
Now, in the case where is Riemannian, we will assume that there exists a globally defined unit vector field N normal to In this case, M is said to be a two-sided hypersurface. In the case where is Lorentzian, since M is a spacelike hypersurface in and is assumed to be timelike, then we can choose a (globally defined) timelike unit vector field N normal to M and in the same time-orientation of , that is we have on In both cases, if is the restriction of to M, then we will denote by the smooth function on M, called the support function that is defined by . It is clear that in the case where is Lorentzian we have . If T is the tangential component of to then we have
where according to whether is Riemannian or Lorentzian, respectively. Since , then the operator given by is well-defined (see for instance [18], pp. 97-99). Then, we have
where is the tangential component of to M and is a one form on Let be the vector field associated to Therefore, for all we have
Since is skew-symmetric, we have , that is . Therefore, (5) implies that
On the other hand, the Gauss and Weingarten formulae for M as a hypersurface of are given by
for all where A is the shape operator of M with respect to Therefore, for all , we have
For that we need to recall some definitions. In general, recall that for a -tensor S, the covariant derivative of S is defined as follows
The divergence of a vector field is defined as the function
where is a local orthonormal frame of vector fields in
The divergence of a -tensor S on M is defined as the vector field
where, as above, is a local orthonormal frame of vector fields in .
We observe that, without loss of generality, we may assume to be parallel. In this case, we see that
We also recall that the curvature tensor R of M is given in terms of the curvature tensor of and the shape operator by the so-called Gauss equation
for all .
Recalling that the mean curvature of M is defined to be
it follows from (11) that the Ricci curvatures and of M and are related as follows
for all .
3. Some useful tensor formulas
With the notations above, let be an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold, and let be an arbitrary vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian. Let be a connected -dimensional Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface into , and let denote the restriction of to
Our main goal in this section is to give a useful expression for the Laplacian of the function , where is an arbitrary vector field and N is a globally defined unit vector field normal to In the case where is Riemannian and is a Killing (resp. conformal) vector field an expression for has been given in [10] (resp. [5]) in terms of the Ricci curvature of and the norm of the shape operator. An analogous formula has been obtained in [9] in the case where is Lorentzian and is a timelike conformal vector field. As we have mentioned in the introduction, in [1], a formula for was obtained in a slightly different way as given in [5] and [9].
Let us denote by the restriction of B to and let . It is clear that f is a smooth function on In fact, from (1), we see that
To calculate we will use (). So, we start by computing the divergences of T and
Proposition 1.
Let the notation and assumptions be as above. Then, we have
Proof.
Let be a local orthonormal frame of vector fields in When and N are extended arbitrarily to vector fields on , then according to (10) and making use of (3) we have
Using the same formula (10) and making use of (8) and of the fact that if S is self-adjoint operator then is so, we obtain
where we have also used here (at the last step) the fact that since A is self-adjoint and is skew-symmetric, then for all i. □
In the following proposition, we give an explicit useful formula for in terms of the Ricci curvature (compare to formula (14) in [1]).
Proposition 2.
Let the notation and assumptions be as above. Then, we have
Proof.
Let be a local orthonormal frame of vector fields in that we assume to be parallel. As we have noticed above, when and N are extended arbitrarily to vector fields on then, using symmetric properties of the curvature tensor of , we have
□
Now, from this last expression and (17) we obtain (18). We now give an expression for For this purpose, we note that
from which we have
Since and it follows that
Proposition 3.
Let the notation and assumptions be as above. Then, we have
Proof.
Let be a parallel local orthonormal frame of vector fields in . Then, by using (19), we deduce that
On the other hand, by extending so that for all we have
_ □
Remark 4.
We are now ready to give the desired expression for
Theorem 5.
Let be a connected -dimensional Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface into an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold Let be an arbitrary vector field that we assume to be timelike in the case where is Lorentzian. and let ξ denote the restriction of to Let N be a globally defined unit vector field normal to and let the notation used here be as above. Then, the Laplacian of the function is given by the following expression
As a straightforward consequence of Theorem 4, we obtain the interesting expression for in the particular case where is a conformal Killing vector field on , that is a vector field satisfying
for some smooth function on called the conformal factor (or potential function) of
Corollary 6.
Let the notation and assumptions be as in Theorem 4, and assume in addition that the vector field is conformal. Then, we have
Proof.
It would be of some use to express in terms of the scalar curvatures of M and . This can be done by combining the two formulas (14) and (26), so that we get formula (31) in the following theorem.
Theorem 7.
Let the notation and assumptions be as in Theorem 4. Then, we have
It should be noticed that formula (31) is nothing but a generalization to the case of an arbitrary vector field on of formula (9) in [1] which was given in the case where is a conformal Killing vector field.
Theorem 8
([1]). Let the notation and assumptions be as in Theorem 4, and assume in addition that the vector field is conformal. Then, we have
On the other hand, we give an expression for
Proposition 9.
Let the notation and assumptions be as above. Then, we have
Proof.
Let be a parallel local orthonormal frame of vector fields in . Note first that
We also note that since then we have With these in hand, we can calculate
as desired. □
Remark 10.
We would like to note here that formula (40) for a hypersurface M and which is valid for any arbitrary vector field looks like a formula that we can easily prove its validity for projective vector fields and which says that if ξ is a projective on a pseudo-Riemannian manifod, then
4. Integral formulas for compact Riemannian hypersurfaces in pseudo-Riemannian manifolds
In this section, we assume that is an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface in an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold with all the assumptions stated at the beginning of the above section. The first integral formula that we can display here results directly from the integration of the simple formula (16).
Proposition 11.
Let be as above. Then, we have
In particular, if is a conformal Killing vector field with conformal factor ψ, then
By using formula (42) of the previous proposition, the following results can be easily deduced.
Proposition 12.
In a Lorentzian manifold admitting an arbitrary (resp. conformal with potential function ψ) timelike vector field, there is no compact spacelike hypersurface whose mean curvature function H satisfies (resp. ).
Proof.
It is clear that if , then either and or and . It follows that either or If M is compact, then formula (42) implies in both cases that and , which is absurd. □
Proposition 13.
With all the notations and assumptions stated at the beginning of the above section, assume further that is either a compact Riemannian manifold that is either minimal or maximal according to whether is Riemannian or Lorentzian, respectively. Then, there exists a point such that that is or equivalently In particular, if ξ is affine, then If ξ is conformal with conformal factor then
As an immediate consequence of Proposition 10, we have the following
Corollary 14.
With all the notations and assumptions stated at the beginning of the above section, assume that is a homothetic vector field. Then, when it is Riemannian (resp. Lorentzian), contains no compact minimal (resp. maximal) Riemannian hypersurface.
A more general result than Proposition 10 is the following
Proposition 15.
With all the notations and assumptions stated at the beginning of the above section, assume that is an arbitrary vector field. Assume further that M is compact with constant mean curvature, and assume (in the case where is Riemannian) that the function θ is not constant and does not change sign.
- (a)
- If then there exists a point such that
- (b)
- If then there exists a point such that
- (c)
- If then there exists a point such that
Remark 16.
On the other hand, we easily deduce from (43) that if is a Killing vector field (i.e. ) and M has constant mean curvature, then either θ vanishes somewhere or (i.e. M is minimal in the case when is Riemannian and maximal in the case when is Lorentzian). Conversely, if is a homothetic vector field (i.e. ψ is constant) and , then is necessarily a Killing vector field. We also deduce from (43) that if is a homothetic vector field and , then is necessarily a Killing vector field. This is exactly what states Theorem 5.3 in [19].
Our second integral formula is the following
Theorem 17.
Let be an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface in an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold . Then, with the assumptions stated in Theorem 4, we have
In particular, when is a conformal Killing vector field with conformal factor ψ, then
Our third integral formula is the following
Theorem 18.
Let be an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface in an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold with the assumptions stated in Theorem 4. Then, we have
In particular, when is a conformal Killing vector field with conformal factor ψ, we meet formula (18) in[1], that is
Proof.
5. Integral formulas for CMC compact Riemannian hypersurfaces in pseudo-Riemannian manifolds
In this section, we will focus on the case when M has constant mean curvature The first result gives an integral formula for a hypersurface with constant mean curvature without any assumption on the ambient space or on the vector field
Theorem 20.
Under the notations and assumptions stated in Theorem 5, let be an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold, and an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface with constant mean curvature H in Then, we have
In particular, when is a conformal Killing vector field with conformal factor ψ, we have
and when is homothetic, we have
Proof.
Since (50) can be used to deduce the following result which generalizes Theorem 5.1 in [19] to the case of a spacelike hypersurface.
Corollary 21.
Let be an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold which admits a homothetic vector field , and let be an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed in as a hypersurface with constant mean curvature. Let N and ξ denote, respectively, the normal to M and the restriction of to Assume that on M and assume (in the case where is Riemannian) that the function does not change sign and is not identically zero. Then, is totally umbilical and on
The second result is a direct consequence of the Theorem 17 under the assumptions that is Einstein and M has constant mean curvature H. This has been proved in [15] in the case when is Riemannian.
Theorem 22.
Let be an -dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian Einstein manifold with a conformal Killing vector field , and let be an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold that is isometrically immersed as a hypersurface in with constant mean curvature With all the notations and assumptions stated at the beginning of the above section, assume in addition (in the case where is Riemannian) that the function θ does not change sign and is not identically zero. Then, is necessarily totally umbilical.
Proof.
Under the assumptions of the proposition, formula (45) becomes
Since does not change sign and is not identically zero, and since we should get from the integral above that We deduce that , that is is totally umbilical. □
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