Bour’s theorem and helicoidal surfaces with constant mean curvature in the Bianchi–Cartan–Vranceanu spaces

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we generalize a classical result of Bour concerning helicoidal surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ R 3 to the case of helicoidal surfaces in the Bianchi–Cartan–Vranceanu (BCV) spaces, i.e., in the Riemannian 3-manifolds whose metrics have groups of isometries of dimension 4 or 6, except the hyperbolic one. In particular, we prove that in a BCV-space there exists a two-parameter family of helicoidal surfaces isometric to a given helicoidal surface; then, by making use of this two-parameter representation, we characterize helicoidal surfaces which have constant mean curvature, including the minimal ones.