An affine characterization of the Veronese surface

Abstract

IfM ² is a nondegenerate surface in a 4-dimensional Riemannian manifold$\tilde M$, then there is a natural affine metricg defined onM ². It is shown that this affine metricg is conformal to the induced Riemannian metric onM ² if and only ifM ² is a minimal submanifold of$\tilde M$ in the usual Riemannian sense. If the conformal factor is a constant, then the two metrics are said to be homothetic. It is shown that there does not exist a nondegenerate surface in Euclidean space ℝ⁴ or hyperbolic spaceH ⁴ whose affine metric is homothetic to the induced Riemannian metric. Furthermore, ifM ² is a nondegenerate surface in the standard 4-sphereS ⁴ whose affine metric is homothetic to the induced Riemannian metric, thenM ² is a Veronese surface.