Principal Mean Curvature Foliations on Surfaces immersed in ${\mathbb R} ^4$

Abstract

Here are studied qualitative properties of the families of curves --foliations-- on a surface immersed in ${\mathbb R}^4$, along which it bends extremally in the direction of the mean normal curvature vector. Typical singularities and cycles are described, which provide sufficient conditions, likely to be also necessary, for the structural stability of the configuration of such foliations and their singularities, under small $C^3$ perturbations of the immersion. The conditions are expressed in terms of Darbouxian type of the normal and umbilic singularities, the hyperbolicity of cycles, and the asymptotic behavior of singularity separatrices and other typical curves of the foliations. They extend those given by Gutierrez and Sotomayor in 1982 for principal foliations and umbilic points of surfaces immersed in ${\mathbb R}^3$. Expressions for the Darbouxian conditions and for the hyperbolicity, calculable in terms of the derivatives of the immersion at singularities and cycles, are provided. The connection of the present extension from ${\mathbb R}^3$ to ${\mathbb R}^4$to other pertinent ones as well as some problems left open in this paper are proposed at the end.