Osculating Sphere at Point of Maximal Curvature Lies to One Side

dg.differential-geometrymg.metric-geometryriemannian-geometry

I'm looking for the higher dimensional version of this post, which says that given a curve $\gamma \subseteq \mathbb{R}^2$, the osculating circle will lie to one side of the curve at points of maximal curvature.

Formally, I am wondering if the following is known/proved: Let $\Omega \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ a bounded, connected open set with $\partial \Omega = \Sigma^{n-1} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ a smooth closed, orientable manifold. Does there exist a point $p$ such that the osculating sphere $S_{p, H(p)}$ lies entirely inside $\overline{\Omega}$ or entirely inside $\overline{\mathbb{R}^n \backslash \Omega}$? Intuitively, one could apply the maximum principle to the osculating sphere at a point which maximizes $|H_{\Sigma}(p)|$, though the details are unclear to me.

Best Answer

As pointed out in the comment by Daniel Asimov, the osculating sphere is undefined (or may not exist).

But, one may ask about the size of the maximal ball surrounded by $\Sigma$ in terms of its principal curvatures --- this is the closest relative of your 1-dimensional question.

This question was considered in a sequence of papers by Vladimir Lagunov and Abram Fet; they constructed examples of surfaces with principal curvatures at most 1 that do not surround a ball of radius 1. You may check 11C in our book What is differential geometry... + you may check an this video by Sergio Zamora. Plus, here is artwork Ana Cristina Cháliz Cáliz from our book that illustrates one such example; this is the so-called Lagunov's fishbowl.

Lagunov's fishbowl

Related Question