Ribaucour Transformations for Hypersurfaces in Space Forms

Abstract

The theory of Ribaucour transformations for hypersurfaces in space forms is established. For any such hypersurface M, that admits orthonormal principal vector fields, it was shown the existence of a totally umbilic hypersurface locally associated to M by a Ribaucour transformation. A method of obtaining linear Weingarten surfaces in a three-dimensional space form is provided. By applying the theory, a new one-parameter family of complete constant mean curvature (cmc) surfaces in the unit sphere, locally associated to the flat torus, is obtained. The family contains a class of complete cmc cylinders in the sphere. In particular, one gets a family of complete minimal surfaces and minimal cylinders, locally associated to the Clifford torus.