A characterization of constant mean curvature surfaces in homogeneous 3-manifolds

Abstract

It has been recently shown by Abresch and Rosenberg that a certain Hopf differential is holomorphic on every constant mean curvature surface in a Riemannian homogeneous 3-manifold with isometry group of dimension 4. In this paper we describe all the surfaces with holomorphic Hopf differential in the homogeneous 3-manifolds isometric to H^2xR or having isometry group isomorphic either to the one of the universal cover of PSL(2,R), or to the one of a certain class of Berger spheres. It turns out that, except for the case of these Berger spheres, there exist some exceptional surfaces with holomorphic Hopf differential and non-constant mean curvature.