Complete spacelike hypersurfaces with constant scalar curvature: Descriptions and gaps

Abstract

We provide sharp lower and upper bounds for the supremum of the norm of the total umbilicity tensor of complete spacelike hypersurfaces with constant scalar curvature immersed in a Lorentzian space form and satisfying a suitable Okumura-type inequality, which corresponds to a weaker hypothesis when compared with the geometric condition of the hypersurface having two distinct principal curvatures. Furthermore, we give a complete description and the gaps of the spacelike hypersurfaces which realize our estimates, obtaining as a consequence new characterizations of totally umbilical spacelike hypersurfaces and hyperbolic cylinders of Lorentzian space forms. Our approach is based on a version of Omori–Yau’s maximum principle for trace-type differential operators defined on a complete Riemannian manifold.