Isotropic ppmc immersions

Abstract

Isometric immersions with parallel pluri-mean curvature (“ppmc”) in euclidean n-space generalize constant mean curvature (“cmc”) surfaces to higher dimensional Kähler submanifolds. Like cmc surfaces they allow a one-parameter family of isometric deformations rotating the second fundamental form at each point. If these deformations are trivial the ppmc immersions are called isotropic. Our main result drastically restricts the intrinsic geometry of such a submanifold: Locally, it must be a symmetric space or a Riemannian product unless the immersion is holomorphic or a superminimal surface in a sphere. We can give a precise classification if the codimension is less than 7. The main idea of the proof is to show that the tangent holonomy is restricted and to apply the Berger–Simons holonomy theorem.