1. Introduction
In the context of differential geometry and statistics, a statistical manifold refers to a semi-Riemannian manifold (see [
1]) equipped with additional structures. Specifically, a statistical manifold is defined as a pair
, where
M is a smooth manifold and
g is a semi-Riemannian metric on
M.
The introduction of Riemannian submersions by Gray and O’Neill has had a significant impact on the field of differential geometry. It has provided a powerful tool for constructing and analyzing Riemannian manifolds with desired curvature properties, as well as facilitating comparisons and investigations of geometric structures. The theory of Riemannian submersions continues to be actively studied and utilized in various areas of mathematics and physics. The theory of Riemannian submersions has been extended over the last three decades by many geometers [
2,
3].
M. Noguchi [
4] conducted a study on statistical manifolds. On a statistical manifold, an alternative connection, referred to as the conjugate (or dual) connection, is established [
5,
6]. This notion has been extensively explored in information geometry [
5,
7]. The concept of statistical submersions between statistical manifolds is a specialized topic in mathematical statistics and differential geometry. By generalizing some of the foundational results of B. O’Neill on Riemannian submersions and geodesics [
8], Abe and Hasegawa [
9] extended the framework to the context of statistical manifolds. Since then, many geometers have contributed to this area (see [
10,
11,
12]). In recent years, various types of statistical submersions have been explored, such as cosymplectic-like statistical submersions [
13], quaternionic Kähler-like statistical submersions [
14], and para-Kähler-like statistical submersions [
15]. Building on Takano’s work, M.D. Siddiqi et al. [
16] presented and comprehensively discussed Kenmotsu-like statistical submersions. Recent research by S. Kazan et al. [
17] investigated holomorphic statistical submersions, unveiling anti-invariant statistical submersions from holomorphic statistical manifolds. Additionally, a comprehensive exploration of locally product-like statistical submersions was undertaken in [
18]. Indeed, numerous submersions are discussed in the survey article [
19]. Also, the Chen–Ricci inequality has been established for the statistical submersion (see [
20,
21]). Moreover, other inequalities have been derived for constant curvature submanifolds within statistical manifolds [
22].
We observe that these structures hold immense significance not only in the field of differential geometry but also across a diverse array of scientific and engineering domains. For instance, in string theory, these structures play a crucial role in understanding the fundamental nature of particles and their interactions. In integrable systems, they help solve complex equations that describe physical phenomena. Quantum systems benefit from these structures in modeling and analyzing the behavior of particles at the quantum level. Additionally, in statistical mechanics, these structures aid in studying the behavior of systems with a large number of particles, providing insights into phase transitions and critical phenomena. In the field of motion planning, these structures are essential for devising algorithms that enable autonomous agents, such as robots, to navigate and perform tasks efficiently. In robotic control and sensing, they enhance the precision and reliability of robotic movements and the interpretation of sensory data. Furthermore, in sensor networks, these structures facilitate the efficient organization and communication of data across multiple sensors, improving the overall performance of the network. Lastly, in digital signal processing, they contribute to the development of advanced techniques for filtering, compressing, and analyzing signals, leading to better performance in applications such as audio and image processing.
In summary, the importance of these structures extends far beyond differential geometry, influencing a wide range of fields that are fundamental to both theoretical research and practical applications in science and engineering.
Constructing Riemannian manifolds with positive or non-negative sectional curvature is a fundamental and classic challenge in Riemannian geometry. Riemannian submersions serve as one method for this, and they have also been instrumental in developing many known Einstein manifolds. The versatility of Riemannian submersions is demonstrated by their application in various fields, including Kaluza–Klein theory, statistical machine learning, medical imaging, statistical analysis on manifolds, and robotics theory. Additionally, this research aims to establish a simple, optimal connection between statistical submersions and minimal immersions, with a discussion of some related findings.
This research primarily employs the following lemma from [
23] to demonstrate that a statistical manifold, which admits a non-trivial statistical submersion with isometric fibers, cannot be isometrically immersed as a doubly minimal manifold in any statistical manifold of non-positive sectional curvature.
Lemma 1. Let be real numbers such thatwhere i runs from i to p. Then, we have . The equality case holds if and only if This paper is structured as follows.
Section 1 provides an introduction. In
Section 2, we present essential notions related to statistical submersions. In
Section 3, we investigate statistical submersions with isometric fibers.
Section 4 explores the sharp relationship between statistical submersions and doubly minimal immersions. This paper concludes with some final remarks.
2. Statistical Submersions
Definition 1. Consider two semi-Riemannian manifolds and . Then, a surjective mapping is called a semi-Riemannian submersion if it satisfies the following conditions:
- 1.
ϑ has maximal rank;
- 2.
preserves the lengths of horizontal vectors.
Now, we take the dimensions of and as and , respectively, with . For each point , the submanifold of , with the induced metric and dimension , is called a fiber and symbolized by . A vector field on is either tangent to fibers (called vertical) or orthogonal to fibers (called horizontal). Also, a vector field on is called basic if it satisfies the following conditions:
For each point
, let the tangent space of the total space
be
and the vertical and horizontal subspaces in
be
and
, respectively. Let the tangent bundle denoted by
of
be expressed as
where
and
are the vertical and horizontal distributions, respectively. The projection mappings are denoted as
and
, respectively.
For a torsion-free affine connection D and a metric G on a (semi-)Riemannian manifold , we say that is a statistical manifold if is a symmetric -tensor. Any torsion-free affine connection D always has a dual (or conjugate) connection given by , where denotes the conjugate connection of D on and is the Levi–Civita connection on .
Let us take a statistical manifold and a semi-Riemannian submersion . We denote the affine connections of as ∇ and , which are torsion-free and conjugate to each other for . The triple is a statistical manifold and so is .
Definition 2. Let and be two statistical manifolds, where is the affine connection on . Then a semi-Riemannian submersion is said to be a statistical submersion [11] if ϑ satisfies for basic vector fields . In classical semi-Riemannian geometry, B. O’Neill defined two
tensor fields
and
in [
8]. So, in statistical geometry,
and
on
with respect to
D are defined by the following formulas [
11,
12]:
for
.
Similarly, the tensor fields and on can also be defined by replacing D with in the above equations.
For vertical vector fields
and horizontal vector fields
, we have the following formulas:
where
R,
, and
are the Riemannian curvature tensor of
, that of
with respect to the induced affine connection ∇, and that of
with respect to
. Note that
is the second fundamental form of each fiber. If
is satisfied for vertical vector fields
and
, then
is referred to as a statistical submersion with doubly isometric fibers. But we use isometric fibers instead of doubly isometric fibers.
Lemma 2. The tensor fields , , , and on have the following properties:
- 1.
; ,
- 2.
,
- 3.
,
- 4.
,
- 5.
,
- 6.
.
3. Statistical Submersions with Isometric Fibers
Consider an isometric immersion of dimension r into an m-dimensional statistical manifold . We denote the conjugate connection of on as . Then, we have the following:
and are the Riemannian curvature tensors of with respect to and , respectively;
S and are the sectional curvature functions of and ;
and are the scalar curvatures of and ;
h and are the symmetric bilinear forms called the embedding curvature tensors of in for and , respectively;
and are the mean curvature vector fields of for and , respectively;
and are the second fundamental form and the mean curvature vector field of for the Levi–Civita connection on .
For an orthonormal basis
of
,
, we define
First, we prepare the following lemma.
Lemma 3. Let be a statistical submersion. The lemma states the following:
- 1.
For the horizontal vector fields and , - 2.
For the horizontal vector field and the vertical vector field ,andwhere is the Riemannian curvature tensor of with respect to .
Proof. From formula (
4), we have
Since we know that
holds for horizontal vector fields
and
, we obtain
Next, we utilize (
5) to derive the second equation of this lemma. Consequently, we have
where we have applied the definition of the statistical manifold and
(see Lemma 2).
Further, we have
Similarly, it is worth noting that the last formula can be easily derived from Equation (
6). □
Proposition 1. Let be a statistical manifold of non-positive sectional curvature. If a statistical submersion has isometric fibers, then the following results hold:
- 1.
The horizontal distribution is integrable for D.
- 2.
The total space is a product space of the base space and the fiber.
- 3.
has non-positive sectional curvature.
Proof. Suppose that
for the orthonormal horizontal vector fields
and
. By Lemma 2, we have
for a unit vector
on
. Therefore, by Lemma 3, it follows that
This contradicts our assumption, implying that
must vanish identically. Since
is related to the integrability of the horizontal distribution,
is symmetric for horizontal vectors if and only if the horizontal distribution is integrable for
D. Hence, the second part directly follows. The third part follows straightforwardly from Lemma 3 and the first part of this corollary. □
Example 1. Consider a statistical manifold with the metricand the affine connection D, defined byWe define the statistical submersion byThen, we find that ϑ has isometric fibers and . Consequently, is a product space of and the fiber. 4. Sharp Relationship between Statistical Submersions and Doubly Minimal Immersions
We use the Gauss equation for
r-dimensional
in
of dimension
m, and we find that
for an orthonormal basis
.
On using
and
, our above equation is modified as
that is,
We define
Then, Equation (
8) simplifies to
We now select a local orthonormal frame
such that
are horizontal vector fields of
,
are vertical vector fields of
, and
is a unit normal vector field parallel to the mean curvature vector field of
. With this choice, Equation (
10) becomes
To use Lemma 1, we rewrite (
11) as
Then, we have
Additionally, the sectional curvature for the plane section defined by unit horizontal and vertical vectors is given by
Then, by the Gauss equation for submersion, we arrive at
By using the simple algebraic inequality, we derive
and
On simplifying (
14), together with the calculations from [
24] and the obtained inequalities (
15) and (
16), we obtain
The mean curvature vectors
and
for dual affine connections on the horizontal and vertical spaces are denoted by
and
. Thus, we have
Assuming the statistical submersion
has isometric fibers, the submersion invariant
for the Levi–Civita connection and those for the dual affine connections are denoted by
and
. For the plane section spanned by unit horizontal and vertical vectors, these are given by
and
From this definition and the last formula of Lemma 3, the sectional curvature can be written as
Thus, we have
In order to derive the desired inequality, we use (
9), (
13), (
17) and (
18), and we find that
Hence, we have the following key inequality to prove the main relationship.
Proposition 2. If a statistical submersion has isometric fibers, then for any isometric immersion of into a statistical manifold , the submersion invariant on satisfieswhere denotes the maximum value of the sectional curvature function of when restricted to 2-plane sections of the tangent space . Corollary 1. Let be a statistical submersion with isometric fibers. Then, for any isometric immersion of into a statistical manifold of constant sectional curvature c, the submersion invariant on satisfies Definition 3. A statistical submanifold of is said to be doubly totally geodesic if and doubly minimal if [25]. It is also noteworthy that the submersion invariant for the Levi–Civita connection can be expressed as . Therefore, we have the main result of this article.
Theorem 1. Let be a statistical manifold. If has a non-trivial statistical submersion with isometric fibers, then it cannot be isometrically immersed as a doubly minimal submanifold into any statistical manifold of non-positive sectional curvature, provided .
Proof. As the given statistical immersion is doubly minimal with and has non-positive sectional curvature, we derive from Proposition 2 that . For any horizontal vector field and vertical vector field on , it follows that . This implies that is vertical. Therefore, is horizontal, for horizontal vector fields .
Additionally, we observe that , which leads to the conclusion that is horizontal. Consequently, we say that is a doubly totally geodesic distribution, meaning that is completely integrable and its leaves are doubly totally geodesic. This contradicts the notion that neither the horizontal nor the vertical distributions of the non-trivial submersion are totally geodesic distributions. □
The following result can be obtained directly from Proposition 2.
Theorem 2. Let be a statistical manifold. If has a non-trivial statistical submersion with isometric fibers, then it cannot be isometrically immersed into any statistical manifold of non-positive sectional curvature as a doubly totally geodesic submanifold.