Infinitesimal bendings of complete Euclidean hypersurfaces

Abstract

A local description of the non-flat infinitesimally bendable Euclidean hypersurfaces was recently given by Dajczer and Vlachos \cite{DaVl}. From their classification, it follows that there is an abundance of infinitesimally bendable hypersurfaces that are not isometrically bendable. In this paper we consider the case of complete hypersurfaces $f\colon M^n\to\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, $n\geq 4$. If there is no open subset where $f$ is either totally geodesic or a cylinder over an unbounded hypersurface of $\mathbb{R}^4$, we prove that $f$ is infinitesimally bendable only along ruled strips. In particular, if the hypersurface is simply connected, this implies that any infinitesimal bending of $f$ is the variational field of an isometric bending.