Rigidity of nonnegatively curved surfaces relative to a curve

Abstract

We prove that any properly oriented $C^{2,1}$ isometric immersion of a positively curved Riemannian surface M into Euclidean 3-space is uniquely determined, up to a rigid motion, by its values on any curve segment in M. A generalization of this result to nonnegatively curved surfaces is presented as well under suitable conditions on their parabolic points. Thus we obtain a local version of Cohn-Vossen's rigidity theorem for convex surfaces subject to a Dirichlet condition. The proof employs in part Hormander's unique continuation principle for elliptic PDEs. Our approach also yields a short proof of Cohn-Vossen's theorem.