On Chern's conjecture for minimal submanifolds of the sphere

Abstract

A well-known conjecture of Chern, do Carmo, and Kobayashi asserts that, for $n,m \geq 1$, the scalar curvature of a closed, minimally immersed $n$-submanifold of $\mathbb{S}^{n+m}$ with second fundamental form of constant length takes values in a discrete set. This property holds in every codimension when $n \in \{1,2\}$. We disprove this conjecture for all $n \geq 3$ with $m \geq 4$, and for even $n \geq 4$ with $m \geq 3$.