The second pinching theorem for hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature in a sphere

Abstract

We generalize the second pinching theorem for minimal hypersurfaces in a sphere due to Peng–Terng, Wei–Xu, Zhang, and Ding–Xin to the case of hypersurfaces with small constant mean curvature. Let $M^n$ be a compact hypersurface with constant mean curvature $H$ in $S^{n+1}$. Denote by $S$ the squared norm of the second fundamental form of $M$. We prove that there exist two positive constants $\gamma (n)$ and $\delta (n)$ depending only on $n$ such that if $|H|\le \gamma (n)$ and $\beta (n,H)\le S\le \beta (n,H)+\delta (n)$, then $S\equiv \beta (n,H)$ and $M$ is one of the following cases: (i) $S^{k}\Big (\sqrt{\frac{k}{n}}\Big )\times S^{n-k}\Big (\sqrt{\frac{n-k}{n}}\Big )$, $\,1\le k\le n-1$; (ii) $S^{1}\Big (\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\mu ^2}}\Big )\times S^{n-1}\Big (\frac{\mu }{\sqrt{1+\mu ^2}}\Big )$. Here $\beta (n,H)=n+\frac{n^3}{2(n-1)}H^2+\frac{n(n-2)}{2(n-1)} \sqrt{n^2H^4+4(n-1)H^2}$ and $\mu =\frac{n|H|+\sqrt{n^2H^2+ 4(n-1)}}{2}$.