Biharmonic Conformal Immersions into Three-Dimensional Manifolds

Abstract

Motivated by the beautiful theory and the rich applications of harmonic conformal immersions and conformal immersions of constant mean curvature (CMC) surfaces, we study biharmonic conformal immersions of surfaces into a generic 3-manifold. We first derive an invariant equation for such immersions, we then try to answer the question, “what surfaces can be biharmonically conformally immersed into Euclidean 3-space $${\mathbb{R}^3}$$ ?” We prove that a circular cylinder is the only CMC surface that can be biharmonically conformally immersed into $${\mathbb{R}^3}$$ ; we obtain a classification of biharmonic conformal immersions of complete CMC surfaces into $${\mathbb{R}^3}$$ and hyperbolic 3-spaces. We also study rotational surfaces that can be biharmonically conformally immersed into $${\mathbb{R}^3}$$ , and prove that a circular cone can never be biharmonically conformally immersed into $${\mathbb{R}^3}$$ .