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THE CHRISTOFFEL PROBLEM IN LORENTZIAN GEOMETRY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2005

Levi Lopes de Lima
Affiliation:
Departamento de Matemática, Universidade Federal do Ceará, R. Humberto Monte, s/n, 60455-760, Fortaleza/CE, Brazil (levi@mat.ufc.br; jherbert@mat.ufc.br)
Jorge Herbert Soares de Lira
Affiliation:
Departamento de Matemática, Universidade Federal do Ceará, R. Humberto Monte, s/n, 60455-760, Fortaleza/CE, Brazil (levi@mat.ufc.br; jherbert@mat.ufc.br)

Abstract

The Christoffel problem, in its classical formulation, asks for a characterization of real functions defined on the unit sphere $S^{n-1}\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ which occur as the mean curvature radius, expressed in terms of the Gauss unit normal, of a closed convex hypersurface, i.e. the boundary of a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^n$. In this work we consider the related problem in Lorentz space $\mathbb{L}^n$ and present necessary and sufficient conditions for a $C^1$ function defined in the hyperbolic space $H^{n-1}\subset\mathbb{L}^n$ to be the mean curvature radius of a spacelike embedding $\bm{M}\hookrightarrow\mathbb{L}^n$.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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