Uniqueness of the Bonnet problem in Thurston geometries

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Main Author: Santiago, José S.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Santiago, José S.
author_facet Santiago, José S.
contents We study the Bonnet problem in Bianchi--Cartan--Vrănceanu spaces and in $\mathrm{Sol}_3$. Our main contribution is to establish the uniqueness of Bonnet mates, which leads us to address the problem of determining when an isometric immersion can be continuously deformed through isometric immersions that preserve the principal curvatures -- a question originally posed in $\mathbb{R}^3$ by Chern~\cite{Chern}. For Bianchi--Cartan--Vrănceanu spaces, we complete the local classification of Bonnet pairs by studying the uniqueness of the results obtained by Gálvez, Martínez and Mira~\cite{GMM}, and we provide new examples of Bonnet mates that were not previously considered. In particular, we prove that the aforesaid continuous deformations only exist for minimal surfaces in the product spaces $\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{R}$ and $\mathbb{H}^2\times\mathbb{R}$ and otherwise only for surfaces with constant principal curvatures. In the case of $\mathrm{Sol}_3$, we give a characterization of Bonnet mates via a system of two differential equations, addressing a problem proposed in~\cite{GMM}. We conclude that the only surfaces admitting continuous isometric deformations that preserve the principal curvatures in $\mathrm{Sol}_3$ are those with constant left-invariant Gauss map.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01602
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uniqueness of the Bonnet problem in Thurston geometries
Santiago, José S.
Differential Geometry
Primary 53A35, Secondary 53C42, 53C30
We study the Bonnet problem in Bianchi--Cartan--Vrănceanu spaces and in $\mathrm{Sol}_3$. Our main contribution is to establish the uniqueness of Bonnet mates, which leads us to address the problem of determining when an isometric immersion can be continuously deformed through isometric immersions that preserve the principal curvatures -- a question originally posed in $\mathbb{R}^3$ by Chern~\cite{Chern}. For Bianchi--Cartan--Vrănceanu spaces, we complete the local classification of Bonnet pairs by studying the uniqueness of the results obtained by Gálvez, Martínez and Mira~\cite{GMM}, and we provide new examples of Bonnet mates that were not previously considered. In particular, we prove that the aforesaid continuous deformations only exist for minimal surfaces in the product spaces $\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{R}$ and $\mathbb{H}^2\times\mathbb{R}$ and otherwise only for surfaces with constant principal curvatures. In the case of $\mathrm{Sol}_3$, we give a characterization of Bonnet mates via a system of two differential equations, addressing a problem proposed in~\cite{GMM}. We conclude that the only surfaces admitting continuous isometric deformations that preserve the principal curvatures in $\mathrm{Sol}_3$ are those with constant left-invariant Gauss map.
title Uniqueness of the Bonnet problem in Thurston geometries
topic Differential Geometry
Primary 53A35, Secondary 53C42, 53C30
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01602