A time-flat condition on spacelike 2-surfaces in spacetime is considered here. This condition is analogous to constant torsion condition for curves in three dimensional space and has been studied in [2, 4, 5, 12, 13]. In particular, any 2-surface in a static slice of a static spacetime is time-flat. In this article, we address the question in the title and prove several local and global rigidity theorems for such surfaces in the Minkowski spacetime.

An odd Seiberg-Witten invariant imposes bounds on the signature of a closed, almost complex 4-manifold with vanishing first Chern class. This applies in particular to symplectic 4-manifolds of Kodaira dimension zero.

Let n be an integer such that 25≤n≤51. We construct a smooth metric g on Sn with the property that the set of constant scalar curvature metrics in the conformal class of g is not compact.

In 2004, Sormani and Wei introduced the covering spectrum: a geometric invariant that isolates part of the length spectrum of a Riemannian manifold. In their paper they observed that certain Sunada isospectral manifolds share the same covering spectrum, thus raising the question of whether the covering spectrum is a spectral invariant. In the present paper we describe a group theoretic condition under which Sunada’s method gives manifolds with identical covering spectra. When the group theoretic condition of our method is not met, we are able to construct Sunada isospectral manifolds with distinct covering spectra in dimension 3 and higher. Hence, the covering spectrum is not a spectral invariant. The main geometric ingredient of the proof has an interpretation as the minimum-marked-length-spectrum analogue of Colin de Verdi`ere’s classical result on constructing metrics where the first k eigenvalues of the Laplace spectrum have been prescribed.

IN 1970 Lawson [22] proved that two embedded closed diffeomorphic minimal surfaces in the unit three-dimensional sphere S3 in lRJ are ambiently isotopic in S3. Lawson proved this theorem by first proving that an embedded orientable closed minimal surface of genus y in a closed orientable Riemannian three-manifold Mwith positive Ricci curvature disconnects M-into two genus-8 handlebodics. A result of Frankel [7] was used to prove this. Lawson then applied a deep result of Waldhauscn [33] that states that decompositions of SJ into two genus-cl handlebodies arc unique up to ambient isotopy. More prcciscly. Waldhauscns uniqucncss thcorcm states that whenever a closed surface of genus y in S separates SJ into handlcbodics, then the embedding of the surface is as simple as possible; in other words, the surface is obtained from a two-sphere Sz c Sby adding handles in an unknotted manner.