Principal configurations and umbilicity of submanifolds in $\mathbb R^N$

Abstract

We consider the principal configurations associated to smooth vector fields $\nu$ normal to a manifold $M$ immersed into a euclidean space and give conditions on the number of principal directions shared by a set of $k$ normal vector fields in order to guaranty the umbilicity of $M$ with respect to some normal field $\nu$. Provided that the umbilic curvature is constant, this will imply that $M$ is hyperspherical. We deduce some results concerning binormal fields and asymptotic directions for manifolds of codimension 2. Moreover, in the case of a surface $M$ in $\mathbb R^N$, we conclude that if $N>4$, it is always possible to find some normal field with respect to which $M$ is umbilic and provide a geometrical characterization of such fields.