All superconformal surfaces in \R^4 in terms of minimal surfaces

Abstract

We give an explicit construction of any simply-connected superconformal surface $\phi\colon M^2\to \R^4$ in Euclidean space in terms of a pair of conjugate minimal surfaces $g,h\colon M^2\to\R^4$. That $\phi$ is superconformal means that its ellipse of curvature is a circle at any point. We characterize the pairs $(g,h)$ of conjugate minimal surfaces that give rise to images of holomorphic curves by an inversion in $\R^4$ and to images of superminimal surfaces in either a sphere $\Sf^4$ or a hyperbolic space $\Hy^4$ by an stereographic projection. We also determine the relation between the pairs $(g,h)$ of conjugate minimal surfaces associated to a superconformal surface and its image by an inversion. In particular, this yields a new transformation for minimal surfaces in $\R^4$.