Abstract
The flat torus \({{\mathbb T}}=\mathbb S^1\left( \frac{1}{2} \right) \times \mathbb S^1\left( \frac{1}{2} \right) \) admits a proper biharmonic isometric immersion into the unit 4-dimensional sphere \(\mathbb S^4\) given by \(\Phi =i \circ \varphi \), where \(\varphi :{{\mathbb T}}\rightarrow \mathbb S^3(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}})\) is the minimal Clifford torus and \(i:\mathbb S^3(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}) \rightarrow \mathbb S^4\) is the biharmonic small hypersphere. The first goal of this paper is to compute the biharmonic index and nullity of the proper biharmonic immersion \(\Phi \). After, we shall study in the detail the kernel of the generalised Jacobi operator \(I_2^\Phi \). We shall prove that it contains a direction which admits a natural variation with vanishing first, second and third derivatives, and such that the fourth derivative is negative. In the second part of the paper, we shall analyse the specific contribution of \(\varphi \) to the biharmonic index and nullity of \(\Phi \). In this context, we shall study a more general composition \({\tilde{\Phi }}=i \circ {\tilde{\varphi }}\), where \({\tilde{\varphi }}: M^m \rightarrow \mathbb S^{n-1}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}})\), \( m \ge 1\), \(n \ge {3}\), is a minimal immersion and \(i:\mathbb S^{n-1}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}) \rightarrow \mathbb S^n\) is the biharmonic small hypersphere. First, we shall determine a general sufficient condition which ensures that the second variation of \({\tilde{\Phi }}\) is nonnegatively defined on \(\mathcal {C}\big ({\tilde{\varphi }}^{-1}T\mathbb S^{n-1}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}})\big )\). Then, we complete this type of analysis on our Clifford torus and, as a complementary result, we obtain the p-harmonic index and nullity of \(\varphi \). In the final section, we compare our general results with those which can be deduced from the study of the equivariant second variation.
We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.
Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.
References
Alias, L.J., Brasil, A., Jr., Perdomo, O.: On the stability index of hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature in spheres. Proc. A.M.S. 135, 3685–3693 (2007)
Balmuş, A., Fetcu, D., Oniciuc, C. (2011): Stability properties for biharmonic maps. Geometry–Exploratory Workshop on Differential Geometry and its Applications, Cluj Univ. Press, Cluj-Napoca, 1–19
Barbosa, J.L., do Carmo, M., Eschenburg, J.: Stability of hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds. Math. Z. 197, 123–138 (1988)
Berger, M., Gauduchon, P., Mazet, E.: Le spectre d’une variètè riemannienne. Lecture Notes in Mathematics 194, p. 251. Springer-Verlag (1971)
Branding, V., Montaldo, S., Oniciuc, C., Ratto, A.: Higher order energy functionals. Adv. Math. 370(107236), 60 (2020)
Chen, B.-Y.: Total mean curvature and submanifolds of finite type. Second edition. Series in Pure Mathematics, 27. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd, Hackensack, NJ (2015)
Ciraolo, G., Vezzoni, L.: Quantitative stability for hypersurfaces with almost constant mean curvature in the hyperbolic space. Indiana. Univ. Math. J. 69, 1105–1153 (2020)
Eells, J., Lemaire, L.: Another report on harmonic maps. Bull. London Math. Soc. 20, 385–524 (1988)
Eells, J., Lemaire, L.: Selected topics in harmonic maps. CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics, 50. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI (1983)
Eells, J., Sampson, J.H.: Variational theory in fibre bundles, pp. 22–33. Proc. U.S.-Japan Seminar in Differential Geometry, Kyoto (1965)
Eells, J., Ratto, A.: Harmonic maps and minimal immersions with symmetries. Annals of Math. Studies 130, p. 228. Princeton Univ. Press (1993)
Jiang, G.Y.: 2-harmonic maps and their first and second variational formulas. Chinese Ann. Math. Ser. A 7, (1986), 389–402. Translated from the Chinese by Hajime Urakawa. Note. Mat. 28, 209–232 (2009)
Hsiang, W.-Y., Lawson, H.B.: Minimal submanifolds of low cohomogeneity. J. Diff. Geom. 5, 1–38 (1971)
Loubeau, E., Oniciuc, C.: The index of biharmonic maps in spheres. Compositio. Math. 141, 729–745 (2005)
Loubeau, E., Oniciuc, C.: On the biharmonic and harmonic indices of the Hopf map. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 359, 5239–5256 (2007)
Montaldo, S., Oniciuc, C., Ratto, A.: Index and nullity of proper biharmonic maps in spheres. Commun. Contemp. Math. 23(1950087), 1–36 (2021)
Montaldo, S., Oniciuc, C., Ratto, A.: Reduction methods for the bienergy. Rev. Roum. Math. Pures. Appl. 61, 261–292 (2016)
Nagano, T., Sumi, M.: Stability of \(p\)-Harmonic Maps. Tokyo. J. Math. 15, 475–482 (1992)
Oniciuc, C.: On the second variation formula for biharmonic maps to a sphere. Publ. Math. Debrecen. 61(3–4), 613–622 (2002)
Ou, Y.-L.(2016): Some recent progress of biharmonic submanifolds. Contemp. Math. 674, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 127–139
Ou, Y.-L.: Stability and the index of biharmonic hypersurfaces in a Riemannian manifold, p. 29. Ann. Mat, Pura Appl (2021)
Ou, Y.-L., Chen, B.-Y.(2020): Biharmonic submanifolds and biharmonic maps in Riemannian geometry. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Hackensack, NJ, , xii+528
Palais, R.S.: The principle of symmetric criticality. Comm. Math. Phys. 69, 19–30 (1979)
Urakawa, H.(1993): Calculus of variations and harmonic maps. Translated from the 1990 Japanese original by the author. Translations of Mathematical Monographs, 132. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, xiv+251
Wei, S.W.: Representing homotopy groups and spaces of maps by \(p\)-harmonic maps. Indiana. Univ. Math. J. 47, 625–670 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
The first and the last author were supported by Fondazione di Sardegna (project STAGE) and are members of the Italian National Group G.N.S.A.G.A. of INdAM. The second author was partially supported by the grant PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-0794.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Montaldo, S., Oniciuc, C. & Ratto, A. On the second variation of the biharmonic Clifford torus in \(\mathbb S^4\). Ann Glob Anal Geom 62, 791–814 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10455-022-09869-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10455-022-09869-7