In Cartan’s PhD thesis, there is a formula defining a certain rank 8 vector distribution in dimension 15, whose algebra of authomorphism is the split real form of the simple exceptional complex Lie algebra $\mathfrak {f}_4$. Cartan’s formula is written in the standard Cartesian coordinates in $\mathbb {R}^{15}$. In the present paper, we explain how to find analogous formulae for the flat models of any bracket generating distribution $\mathcal D$ whose symbol algebra $\mathfrak {n}({\mathcal D})$ is constant and 2-step graded, $\mathfrak {n}({\mathcal D})=\mathfrak {n}_{-2}\oplus \mathfrak {n}_{-1}$.

The formula is given in terms of a solution to a certain system of linear algebraic equations determined by two representations $(\rho ,\mathfrak {n}_{-1})$ and $(\tau ,\mathfrak {n}_{-2})$ of a Lie algebra $\mathfrak {n}_{00}$ contained in the $0$th order Tanaka prolongation $\mathfrak {n}_0$ of $\mathfrak {n}({\mathcal D})$.

Numerous examples are provided, with particular emphasis put on the distributions with symmetries being real forms of simple exceptional Lie algebras $\mathfrak {f}_4$ and $\mathfrak {e}_6$.

We show that any isometric immersion of a flat plane domain into ${\mathbb {R}}^3$ is developable provided it enjoys the little Hölder regularity $c^{1,2/3}$. In particular, isometric immersions of local $C^{1,\alpha }$ regularity with $\alpha >2/3$ belong to this class. The proof is based on the existence of a weak notion of second fundamental form for such immersions, the analysis of the Gauss–Codazzi–Mainardi equations in this weak setting, and a parallel result on the very weak solutions to the degenerate Monge–Ampère equation analysed in [M. Lewicka and M. R. Pakzad. Anal. PDE 10 (2017), 695–727.].

We introduce the concept of extrinsic catenary in the hyperbolic plane. Working in the hyperboloid model, we define an extrinsic catenary as the shape of a curve hanging under its weight as seen from the ambient space. In other words, an extrinsic catenary is a critical point of the potential functional, where we calculate the potential with the extrinsic distance to a fixed reference plane in the ambient Lorentzian space. We then characterize extrinsic catenaries in terms of their curvature and as a solution to a prescribed curvature problem involving certain vector fields. In addition, we prove that the generating curve of any minimal surface of revolution in the hyperbolic space is an extrinsic catenary with respect to an appropriate reference plane. Finally, we prove that one of the families of extrinsic catenaries admits an intrinsic characterization if we replace the extrinsic distance with the intrinsic length of horocycles orthogonal to a reference geodesic.

In this article, we investigate the spectra of the stability and Hodge–Laplacian operators on a compact manifold immersed as a hypersurface in a smooth metric measure space, possibly with singularities. Using ideas developed by A. Ros and A. Savo, along with an ingenious computation, we have obtained a comparison between the spectra of these operators. As a byproduct of this technique, we have deduced an estimate of the Morse index of such hypersurfaces.

The central theme of this paper is the holomorphic spectral theory of the canonical Laplace operator of the complement of the “complexified unit circle” $\{(z,w) \in \widehat {{\mathbb C}}^2 \colon z \cdot w = 1\}$. We start by singling out a distinguished set of holomorphic eigenfunctions on the bidisk in terms of hypergeometric ${}_2F_1$ functions and prove that they provide a spectral decomposition of every holomorphic eigenfunction on the bidisk. As a second step, we identify the maximal domains of definition of these eigenfunctions and show that these maximal domains naturally determine the fine structure of the eigenspaces. Our main result gives an intrinsic classification of all closed Möbius invariant subspaces of eigenspaces of the canonical Laplacian of $\Omega $. Generalizing foundational prior work of Helgason and Rudin, this provides a unifying complex analytic framework for the real-analytic eigenvalue theories of both the hyperbolic and spherical Laplace operators on the open unit disk resp. the Riemann sphere and, in particular, shows how they are interrelated with one another.

We provide a natural simple argument using anistropic flows to prove the existence of weak solutions to Lutwak’s $L^p$-Minkowski problem on $S^n$ which were obtained by other methods.

An element g in a group G is called reversible if g is conjugate to g−1 in G. An element g in G is strongly reversible if g is conjugate to g−1 by an involution in G. The group of affine transformations of $\mathbb D^n$ may be identified with the semi-direct product $\mathrm{GL}(n, \mathbb D) \ltimes \mathbb D^n $, where $\mathbb D:=\mathbb R, \mathbb C$ or $ \mathbb H $. This paper classifies reversible and strongly reversible elements in the affine group $\mathrm{GL}(n, \mathbb D) \ltimes \mathbb D^n $.

Let $f\;:\; M\rightarrow \mathbb{C}P^{2}$ be an isometric immersion of a compact surface in the complex projective plane $\mathbb{C}P^{2}$. In this paper, we consider the Helfrich-type functional $\mathcal{H}_{\lambda _{1},\lambda _{2}}(f)=\int _{M}(|H|^{2}+\lambda _{1}+\lambda _{2} C^{2})\textrm{d} M$, where $\lambda _{1}, \lambda _{2}\in \mathbb{R}$ with $\lambda _{1}\geqslant 0$, $H$ and $C$ are respectively the mean curvature vector and the Kähler function of $M$ in $\mathbb{C}P^{2}$. The critical surfaces of $\mathcal{H}_{\lambda _{1},\lambda _{2}}(f)$ are called Helfrich surfaces. We compute the first variation of $\mathcal{H}_{\lambda _{1},\lambda _{2}}(f)$ and classify the homogeneous Helfrich tori in $\mathbb{C}P^{2}$. Moreover, we study the Helfrich energy of the homogeneous tori and show the lower bound of the Helfrich energy for such tori.

This note is motivated by recent studies by Eriksson-Bique and Soultanis about the construction of charts in general metric measure spaces. We analyze their construction and provide an alternative and simpler proof of the fact that these charts exist on sets of finite Hausdorff dimension. The observation made here offers also some simplification about the study of the relation between the reference measure and the charts in the setting of $\text {RCD}$ spaces.

We show that any embedding $\mathbb {R}^d \to \mathbb {R}^{2d+2^{\gamma (d)}-1}$ inscribes a trapezoid or maps three points to a line, where $2^{\gamma (d)}$ is the smallest power of $2$ satisfying $2^{\gamma (d)} \geq \rho (d)$, and $\rho (d)$ denotes the Hurwitz–Radon function. The proof is elementary and includes a novel application of nonsingular bilinear maps. As an application, we recover recent results on the nonexistence of affinely $3$-regular maps, for infinitely many dimensions $d$, without resorting to sophisticated algebraic techniques.

The total mean curvature functional for submanifolds into the Riemannian product space $\mathbb{S}^n\times\mathbb{R}$ is considered and its first variational formula is presented. Later on, two second-order differential operators are defined and a nice integral inequality relating both of them is proved. Finally, we prove our main result: an integral inequality for closed stationary $\mathcal{H}$-surfaces in $\mathbb{S}^n\times\mathbb{R}$, characterizing the cases where the equality is attained.

In this paper, we obtain one sharp estimate for the length $L(\partial\Sigma)$ of the boundary $\partial\Sigma$ of a capillary minimal surface Σ2 in M3, where M is a compact three-manifolds with strictly convex boundary, assuming Σ has index one. The estimate is in term of the genus of Σ, the number of connected components of $\partial\Sigma$ and the constant contact angle θ. Making an extra assumption on the geometry of M along $\partial M$, we characterize the global geometry of M, which is saturated only by the Euclidean three-balls. For capillary stable CMC surfaces, we also obtain similar results.

We show that a complete, two-sided, stable immersed anisotropic minimal hypersurface in $\mathbf {R}^4$ has intrinsic cubic volume growth, provided the parametric elliptic integral is $C^2$ -close to the area functional. We also obtain an interior volume upper bound for stable anisotropic minimal hypersurfaces in the unit ball. We can estimate the constants explicitly in all of our results. In particular, this paper gives an alternative proof of our recent stable Bernstein theorem for minimal hypersurfaces in $\mathbf {R}^4$ . The new proof is more closely related to techniques from the study of strictly positive scalar curvature.

We obtain a complete topological classification of $k$-folding map-germs on generic surfaces in $\mathbb {R}^3$, discover new robust features of surfaces and recover, in a unified way, many of the robust features that were obtained previously by considering the contact of a surface with lines, planes or spheres.

We investigate the weighted $L_p$ affine surface areas which appear in the recently established $L_p$ Steiner formula of the $L_p$ Brunn–Minkowski theory. We show that they are valuations on the set of convex bodies and prove isoperimetric inequalities for them. We show that they are related to f divergences of the cone measures of the convex body and its polar, namely the Kullback–Leibler divergence and the Rényi divergence.

We prove an improvement on Schmidt’s upper bound on the number of number fields of degree n and absolute discriminant less than X for $6\leq n\leq 94$ . We carry this out by improving and applying a uniform bound on the number of monic integer polynomials, having bounded height and discriminant divisible by a large square, that we proved in a previous work [7].

The method of equivariant moving frames is employed to construct and completely classify the differential invariants for the action of the projective group on functions defined on the two-dimensional projective plane. While there are four independent differential invariants of order $\leq 3$, it is proved that the algebra of differential invariants is generated by just two of them through invariant differentiation. The projective differential invariants are, in particular, of importance in image processing applications.

We give a short proof of the Torelli theorem for $ALH^*$ gravitational instantons using the authors’ previous construction of mirror special Lagrangian fibrations in del Pezzo surfaces and rational elliptic surfaces together with recent work of Sun-Zhang. In particular, this includes an identification of 10 diffeomorphism types of $ALH^*_b$ gravitational instantons.

We study ribbons of vanishing Gaussian curvature, i.e. flat ribbons, constructed along a curve in $\mathbb {R}^{3}$. In particular, we first investigate to which extent the ruled structure determines a flat ribbon: in other words, we ask whether for a given curve $\gamma$ and ruling angle (angle between the ruling line and the curve's tangent) there exists a well-defined flat ribbon. It turns out that the answer is positive only up to an initial condition, expressed by a choice of normal vector at a point. We then study the set of infinitely narrow flat ribbons along a fixed curve $\gamma$ in terms of energy. By extending a well-known formula for the bending energy of the rectifying developable, introduced in the literature by Sadowsky in 1930, we obtain an upper bound for the difference between the bending energies of two solutions of the initial value problem. We finally draw further conclusions under some additional assumptions on the ruling angle and the curve $\gamma$.

Given $a,\,b\in \mathbb {R}$ and $\Phi \in C^{1}(\mathbb {S}^{2})$, we study immersed oriented surfaces $\Sigma$ in the Euclidean 3-space $\mathbb {R}^{3}$ whose mean curvature $H$ and Gauss curvature $K$ satisfy $2aH+bK=\Phi (N)$, where $N:\Sigma \rightarrow \mathbb {S}^{2}$ is the Gauss map. This theory widely generalizes some of paramount importance such as the ones constant mean and Gauss curvature surfaces, linear Weingarten surfaces and self-translating solitons of the mean curvature flow. Under mild assumptions on the prescribed function $\Phi$, we exhibit a classification result for rotational surfaces in the case that the underlying fully nonlinear PDE that governs these surfaces is elliptic or hyperbolic.