A characterization of round spheres in space forms

Abstract

Let $\mathbb Q^{n+1}_c$ be the complete simply-connected $(n+1)$-dimensional space form of curvature $c$. In this paper we obtain a new characterization of geodesic spheres in $\mathbb Q^{n+1}_c$ in terms of the higher order mean curvatures. In particular, we prove that the geodesic sphere is the only complete bounded immersed hypersurface in $\mathbb Q^{n+1}_c,\;c\leq 0,$ with constant mean curvature and constant scalar curvature. The proof relies on the well known Omori-Yau maximum principle, a formula of Walter for the Laplacian of the $r$-th mean curvature of a hypersurface in a space form, and a classical inequality of G\aa rding for hyperbolic polynomials.