Complete classification of spatial surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector in arbitrary non-flat pseudo-Riemannian space forms

Abstract

Abstract Submanifolds with parallel mean curvature vector play important roles in differential geometry, theory of harmonic maps as well as in physics. Spatial surfaces in 4D Lorentzian space forms with parallel mean curvature vector were classified by B. Y. Chen and J. Van der Veken in [9]. Recently, spatial surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector in arbitrary pseudo-Euclidean spaces are also classified in [7]. In this article, we classify spatial surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector in pseudo-Riemannian spheres and pseudo-hyperbolic spaces with arbitrary codimension and arbitrary index. Consequently, we achieve the complete classification of spatial surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector in all pseudo-Riemannian space forms. As an immediate by-product, we obtain the complete classifications of spatial surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector in arbitrary Lorentzian space forms.