Partially umbilic singularities of hypersurfaces of $\mathbb R^4$

Abstract

This paper establishes the geometric structure of the lines of principal curvature of a hypersurface immersed in ${\mathbb R}^4$ in a neighborhood of the set $\mathcal{S}$ of its principal curvature singularities, consisting of the points at which atF least two principal curvatures are equal. Under generic conditions defined by appropriate transversality hypotheses it is proved that $\mathcal{S}$ is the union of regular smooth curves $\mathcal{S}_{12}$ and $\mathcal{S}_{23}$, consisting of partially umbilic points, where only two principal curvatures coincide. This curve is partitioned into regular arcs consisting of points of Darbouxian types $D_1,\; D_2,\; D_3$, with common boundary at isolated semi-Darbouxian transition points of types $ D_{12}$ and $D_{23}$. The stratified structure of the partially umbilic separatrix surfaces, consisting of the boundary of the set of points through which the principal lines approach $\mathcal S$, established in this work, extends to hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb R}^4$ the results of Darboux for umbilic points on analytic surfaces in ${\mathbb R}^3$, reformulated by Gutierrez and Sotomayor, to describe the umbilic separatrix structures of the umbilic types $D_1,\; D_2,\; D_3$, and further developed by Garcia, Gutierrez and Sotomayor, for their $ D_{12}$ and $D_{23}$ generic bifurcations. This work complements results of Garcia on the structure of principal curvature lines around the generic partially umbilic points of hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb R}^4$.