Abstract
We prove that a compact minimal shadow boundary of a hypersurface in Euclidean space is totally geodesic. We show that shadow boundaries detect principal directions and umbilical points of a hypersurface. As application we deduce that every shadow boundary of a compact strictly convex surface contains at least two principal directions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Choe J.: Index, vision number and stability of complete minimal surfaces. Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 109(3), 195–212 (1990)
Craveiro de Carvalho F.J., Robertson S.A.: Convex hypersurfaces with transnormal horizons are spheres. Note di Matematica VII, 167–172 (1987)
Ghomi M.: Shadows and convexity of surfaces. Ann. Math. 155, 281–293 (2002)
Ruiz-Hernández G.: Helix, shadow boundary and minimal submanifolds. Ill. J. Math. 52(4), 1385–1397 (2008)
Ruiz-Hernández G.: Totally geodesic shadow boundary submanifolds and a characterization for \({{\mathbb{S}}^n}\) . Arch. Math. 90, 374–384 (2008)
Smyth B.: Submanifolds of constant mean curvature. Math. Ann. 205, 265–280 (1973)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by D. V. Alekseevsky.
G. Ruiz-Hernández was partially supported by Conacyt.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Di Scala, A.J., Jerónimo-Castro, J. & Ruiz-Hernández, G. A compact minimal shadow boundary in Euclidean space is totally geodesic. Monatsh Math 168, 183–189 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00605-011-0352-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00605-011-0352-y