Characterizations of umbilic points of isometric immersions in Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds

Abstract

Several characterizations of umbilic points of submanifolds in arbitrary Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds are given. As a consequence, we obtain new characterizations of spheres in the Euclidean space and of hyperbolic spaces in the Lorentz-Minkowski space. We also prove the Lorentzian version of a classical result by Cartan.