Immersions with a parallel normal field.
A submanifold of the Euclidean space is said to be infinitesimally rigid if any smooth variation which is isometric to first order is trivial. The main purpose of this paper is to show that local or global conditions which are well known to imply isometric rigidity also imply infinitesimal rigidity.
In the tangent plane at any point of a surface in the four-dimensional Euclidean space we consider an invariant linear map ofWeingarten-type and find a geometrically determined moving frame field. Writing derivative formulas of Frenet-type for this frame field, we obtain eight invariant functions. We prove a fundamental theorem of Bonnet-type, stating that these eight invariants under some natural conditions determine the surface up to a motion. We show that the basic geometric classes of surfaces...