A class of real-analytic surfaces in the 3-Euclidean space

Abstract

A smooth surface $S$ in $\bf{R}^3$ is called parallel curved if there exists a plane in $\bf{R}^3$ such that at each point of $S$, there exists a principal direction parallel to the plane. For example, a plane, a cylinder and a round sphere are parallel curved. More generally, a surface of revolution is also parallel curved. The purposes of this paper are to study the behavior of the principal distributions on a real-analytic, parallel curved surface and to classify the connected, complete, real-analytic, embedded, parallel curved surfaces.