Biharmonic hypersurfaces with constant scalar curvature in space forms

Abstract

Let $M^n$ be a biharmonic hypersurface with constant scalar curvature in a space form $\mathbb M^{n+1}(c)$. We show that $M^n$ has constant mean curvature if $c>0$ and $M^n$ is minimal if $c\leq0$, provided that the number of distinct principal curvatures is no more than 6. This partially confirms Chen's conjecture and Generalized Chen's conjecture. As a consequence, we prove that there exist no proper biharmonic hypersurfaces with constant scalar curvature in Euclidean space $\mathbb E^{n+1}$ or hyperbolic space $\mathbb H^{n+1}$ for $n<7$.