1. Introduction
Submanifold theory has long been a fundamental area of investigation in differential geometry due to its ability to capture the intricate relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of geometric structures [
1]. At the core of this theory lies the study of curvature invariants, which encode essential information about the shape, bending, and embedding of submanifolds within ambient Riemannian or semi-Riemannian manifolds. The interplay between intrinsic quantities, such as scalar curvature, and extrinsic measures, such as the mean curvature and the second fundamental form, has given rise to a variety of important geometric inequalities [
2,
3,
4].
One of the most influential contributions in this context is due to B.-Y. Chen, who introduced a set of inequalities, now known as Chen inequalities, that provide bounds on scalar curvature in terms of extrinsic invariants. These inequalities not only serve as sharp analytical tools but also provide characterizations of special types of submanifolds, such as totally geodesic, minimal, or pseudo-umbilical submanifolds [
2,
3,
5]. Over the years, many generalizations and refinements of Chen’s original inequalities have been proposed, which are motivated by applications in geometric analysis [
6,
7], mathematical physics [
8,
9], and global Riemannian geometry [
10,
11,
12].
Among these generalizations, the concept of
-Casorati curvature has emerged as a refined measure of extrinsic geometry that takes into account the squared norms of the second fundamental form components [
13,
14,
15]. Unlike mean curvature, which involves only the trace of the second fundamental form, the Casorati curvature reflects the total distribution of curvature across all normal directions. The introduction of normalized
-Casorati curvature (NDCC) and its generalized forms has significantly expanded the scope of curvature inequalities [
16,
17,
18], enabling sharper estimates and a deeper geometric understanding of submanifolds under various curvature constraints [
19,
20,
21,
22].
On another front,
S-manifolds provide a rich class of almost-contact metric manifolds, which include as special cases Sasakian manifolds when the number of structure vector fields is one and Kähler manifolds when this number is zero [
23,
24,
25]. These manifolds are equipped with a
-tensor field
, a Riemannian metric
g, and a family of vector fields and associated 1-forms that interact according to a well-defined algebraic structure. The presence of multiple-structure vector fields allows
S-manifolds to model more complex geometric behaviors than their Sasakian counterparts, making them particularly suitable for generalizing contact geometry and its applications [
26,
27].
An important modification in this setting arises when the Levi–Civita connection is replaced by an SSMC. This type of connection incorporates torsion in a structured way while preserving metric compatibility and has been studied in various contexts due to its applicability in both geometry and physics [
19,
21,
28]. The interaction between submanifolds and SSMCs has been shown to yield new geometric phenomena not captured under standard Riemannian assumptions.
In this work, we examine a special class of submanifolds, namely, bi-slant submanifolds, within the setting of
S-space forms endowed with SSMCs. A bi-slant submanifold is defined by the property that its tangent bundle admits an orthogonal decomposition into two slant distributions, with each associated with a distinct slant angle [
24,
29,
30]. This generalizes several well-known types of submanifolds, such as invariant, anti-invariant, slant, semi-slant, and CR-submanifolds. Bi-slant geometry has gained attention due to its ability to unify different geometric behaviors within a single framework.
Our primary goal in this article is to derive two sharp geometric inequalities involving generalized normalized -Casorati curvatures (GNDCCs) for bi-slant submanifolds in S-space forms with SSMCs. These inequalities not only generalize and sharpen existing results in the literature but also provide new characterizations of equality cases. In particular, we identify the conditions under which equality holds and show that they correspond to totally geodesic submanifolds, forming an important geometric configuration.
To further support our theoretical findings, we explore the special cases where bi-slant submanifolds reduce to semi-slant, hemi-slant, CR-, invariant, and anti-invariant submanifolds, and we demonstrate how our results apply in each setting. Several explicit examples are also constructed to illustrate the importance of this study.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In
Section 2, we review fundamental definitions and formulas related to
S-manifolds and their submanifolds, and we also provide a concrete example of an
S-manifold.
Section 3 is devoted to the foundational aspects of Casorati geometry for submanifolds within
S-space forms. In
Section 4, we establish new optimal inequalities for bi-slant submanifolds in this setting.
Section 5 extends the discussion to related results for other classes of submanifolds. Finally, in
Section 6, we illustrate several examples to support our article.
2. Preliminaries
The notion of an
S-manifold, introduced by D. E. Blair, extends several well-known geometric structures in differential geometry, including Sasakian and Kähler manifolds [
23]. An
S-manifold is a Riemannian manifold equipped with a specific tensor field and a set of structure vector fields that together define its rich geometric framework.
Let
be a
-dimensional Riemannian manifold. It is said to possess an
S-structure if there exists a
-type tensor field
of rank
, along with
globally defined vector fields
, called structure vector fields, and their associated 1-forms
, such that the following conditions hold:
for all vector fields
. Additionally, the structure must satisfy the integrability condition
and the non-degeneracy condition
where
F stands for the fundamental 2-form corresponding to the structure tensor
, which satisfies
, and
denotes the Nijenhuis tensor of
.
On an
S-manifold, the Levi–Civita connection
satisfies the identities below:
for all
and for each
.
Example 1 (S-Manifolds)
. Let be the Euclidean space with global coordinatesThe structure vector fields for , 1-forms for , and tensor field Φ of type are defined byfor and , and the Riemannian metric is It is easy to verify that these satisfy the defining properties of an S-manifold as Hence, is an S-manifold.
The Gauss equation for a submanifold
M of the
S-manifolds expresses the curvature of
M in terms of the ambient curvature and the second fundamental form
. It is given by
where
are tangent vector fields on
M, and
g denotes the Riemannian metric.
When the ambient manifold
is equipped with an SSMC
, the associated curvature tensor
is modified accordingly. Its expression is
for any vector fields
, where
is a symmetric
-tensor defined by
and
P is a vector field satisfying
for all
.
A manifold with an
S-structure and constant
-sectional curvature
c is known as an
S-space form, which is denoted by
. When
M is a submanifold of
, its ambient curvature tensor
R is expressed as [
21,
26]
where
is the second fundamental form of
M, and
.
For any
, the action of
on
U can be decomposed into tangential and normal components as
where
, and
.
Slant submanifolds were introduced in the literature by B.-Y. Chen in the setting of complex manifolds as a natural extension of both holomorphic and totally real submanifolds [
29]. This idea was later adapted to the context of almost-contact metric manifolds by Lotta [
30] and further extended to
S-manifolds by Carriazo and collaborators [
25].
Definition 1 (Slant submanifold [
25])
. Let be an S-manifold and M be a submanifold such that all structure vector fields are tangent to M. The submanifold M is called a slant submanifold if for every point and every vector orthogonal to , the angle θ between and the tangent space is constant. The constant is known as the slant angle of M. The concept of bi-slant submanifolds was first introduced by Carriazo et al. [
24] in almost-contact metric geometry and can be naturally extended to the framework of
S-manifolds that follows.
Definition 2 (Bi-slant submanifold). Let be an S-manifold and M be a submanifold of such that all structure vector fields lie in . Denote by the distribution generated by these structure vector fields. The submanifold M is said to be a bi-slant submanifold if there exist two orthogonal distributions and on M such that
- (i)
The tangent bundle splits orthogonally as ;
- (ii)
Each distribution is a slant distribution with constant slant angle , for .
It is worth noting that several well-known classes of submanifolds, such as semi-slant, hemi-slant, CR-submanifolds, and slant submanifolds, can be viewed as special cases of bi-slant submanifolds. These particular cases are illustrated in the following
Table 1 [
20].
Let
be a
-dimensional
S-manifold and
M be a
-dimensional bi-slant submanifold in
. Then, for the orthonormal basis
of the tangent space
, the squared norm of
P at
is given by [
31,
32]
where
and
are dimensions of
and
, respectively, and
3. Casorati Geometry of Submanifolds Within -Space Forms
Let be a -dimensional S-manifold, and let M be an -dimensional Riemannian submanifold of . Consider a point , and let be an orthonormal basis of the tangent space , while forms an orthonormal basis of the normal space .
The scalar curvature
of
M at the point
x is defined as the sum of sectional curvatures over all independent pairs of tangent vectors as follows:
where
denotes the sectional curvature of the plane spanned by
and
.
The corresponding normalized scalar curvature
is given by
The vector
H, representing the mean curvature of
M, is given by
where
is the second fundamental form of
M. The squared norm of
H is then
with
for
and
.
The Casorati curvature
C of the submanifold
M at
x is defined by [
33,
34,
35]
Now, let ℧ be an
r-dimensional subspace of
for
, with orthonormal basis
. Then, the scalar curvature and Casorati curvature of ℧ are defined respectively as
The following curvature invariants are known as the NDCCs:
To further generalize these quantities, define a function
for a positive real number
as
Then, the GNDCCs at
x are given by
These generalized invariants play a central role in curvature inequalities, particularly those relating to the intrinsic and extrinsic geometry of submanifolds in S-space forms.
4. Optimal Inequalities for Bi-Slant Submanifolds
In this section, we derive sharp inequalities that relate the normalized scalar curvature of bi-slant submanifolds in S-space forms to GNDCCs and NDCCs. These bounds capture the interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic geometric quantities and serve as natural extensions of classical Chen-type inequalities. The inequalities established here not only generalize earlier results for special submanifold classes but also provide conditions for equality, offering a deeper understanding of the geometric structure under an SSMC.
We state the following inequalities.
Theorem 1. Let M be a bi-slant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (9) and (10) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Proof. Let
and
be orthonormal bases of
and
, respectively, at any point
. Then, from (
5), (
7), (
8), and (
4) we have
We introduce a quadratic expression
, formulated using the components of the second fundamental form, as follows:
where ℧ is a hyperplane of
.
Assume that the subspace ℧ is defined by the span of
; then, Equation (
12) gives
The above equation is equivalently expressed as
It is observed that the solution to the following system of homogeneous equations is
and
are the critical points
of
from (
13).
As a result, every solution
satisfies
whenever
. Additionally, the determinant associated with the first two equations in (
14) vanishes. The Hessian matrix of the quadratic form
then takes the following block-diagonal structure:
where
denotes a null matrix of appropriate dimension, and the matrices
,
, and
are defined in the following.
and
Also,
has the following eigenvalues (see [
12,
21]):
It follows from Equation (
15) that the function
is parabolic in nature and attains its minimum value at
, where
denotes a solution of the system (
14). Consequently, the inequality
holds, leading to
Therefore, using (
16), it follows that for every tangent hyperplane ℧ of
M, we have
Evaluating the infimum over all tangent hyperplanes ℧ leads directly to the result. The condition for equality is satisfied if and only if
and
for all
.
On the other hand, since
, one has
. Then, (
18) implies that
M is totally geodesic.
Using a comparable method, one can establish the geometric inequality presented in (ii).
□
Corollary 1. Let M be a bi-slant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The NDCC satisfies
Equality in the inequality characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic.
- (ii)
The NDCC satisfies
Equality in the inequality characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic.
Proof. It is straightforward to verify that
for all
. Inserting
into (
9) and taking into account (
21), we have our assertion. Using a comparable method, one can establish the geometric inequality presented in (ii). Further, equality holds in the inequality (
19) if and only if
and
for all
.
It follows that equality in (
20) holds exactly when (
22) is satisfied with
for all
.
Because
, consequently, the validity of equalities (
23) and (
24) each leads to the conclusion that
M must be a totally geodesic submanifold.
□
5. Results in Other Classes of Submanifolds
In this section, we explore how the established inequalities specialize to notable classes of submanifolds such as semi-slant, hemi-slant, CR-, invariant, and anti-invariant submanifolds. Furthermore, we examine the conditions necessary for equality to hold. We further demonstrate that the equality case characterizes a specific geometric configuration, namely, totally geodesic submanifolds.
Theorem 2. Let M be a semi-slant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfiesfor any real number t such that . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfiesfor any real number .
Equality in the inequalities (25) and (26) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Theorem 3. Let M be a pseudo-slant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (27) and (28) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Theorem 4. Let M be a CR-submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (29) and (30) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Theorem 5. Let M be a slant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (31) and (32) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Theorem 6. Let M be an invariant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (33) and (34) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Theorem 7. Let M be an anti-invariant submanifold of dimension immersed in a -dimensional S-space form endowed with an SSMC. Then, the following results hold:
- (i)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t is any real parameter lying strictly between 0 and . - (ii)
The GNDCC satisfieswhere t denotes any real number exceeding .
Equality in the inequalities (35) and (36) characterizes the case where the submanifold M is totally geodesic. Remark 1. The first four theorems follow directly from Table 1 in conjunction with Theorem 1. The remaining two results correspond to the special cases of slant submanifolds when the slant angle is set to and , which yield the cases of invariant and anti-invariant submanifolds, respectively. Remark 2. We can obtain results similar to Theorem 2, Theorem 3, Theorem 4, Theorem 5, Theorem 6, and Theorem 7 corresponding to the Corollary 1.
Remark 3. The results presented in this article naturally extend to Sasakian and Kähler manifolds as special cases of the S-manifold framework. In particular, by taking , the structure reduces to that of a Sasakian manifold, whereas setting yields the classical Kähler case.
6. Illustrative Examples
In this section, we present explicit constructions of bi-slant submanifolds within an
S-manifold equipped with the standard
S-structure. These examples are motivated by the framework developed by Carriazo and collaborators [
25] and serve to demonstrate the geometric features discussed in the preceding sections.
Example 2. Let be an S-space form of dimension with -structure and constant ϕ-sectional curvature . The structure satisfies We consider the ambient coordinatesand define the structure tensors Let and .
Define a submanifold M of via the immersionwhere are fixed constants. Then, the tangent space of M is spanned by the vector fields For all i, (i.e., is normal to M). Therefore, both and are anti-invariant distributions. The total tangent bundle is anti-invariant as well.
Thus, M is a bi-slant submanifold of the S-space form corresponding to Case 1 in [32], where both distributions are anti-invariant, and M is also an anti-invariant submanifold. Example 3. Let be an -dimensional S-space form with structure tensors and constant ϕ-sectional curvature . The structure satisfies Consider the local coordinates with the S-structure defined by Now, define a submanifold M by the embeddingfor fixed angles . Then, the tangent space is spanned by the vector fields Define distributionsThen, is a slant distribution with slant angle . is a slant distribution with slant angle . is not a slant distribution as a whole, since . is invariant, since . Hence, M is a proper bi-slant submanifold of the S-space form corresponding to Case 2 in [32]. Example 4. Let be an S-space form with constant ϕ-sectional curvature c endowed with structure tensors satisfying Assume that the local coordinates arewith the S-structure given by Define a submanifold M of by the embedding Then, the tangent space of M is spanned by Then, is a slant distribution (not invariant and not anti-invariant) with slant angle , is also a slant distribution with the same angle θ, is again a slant distribution (with same angle θ), and is invariant (since ).
Hence, the submanifold M is a proper bi-slant submanifold of the S-space form corresponding to Case 3 in [32], where , are slant distributions, and is also a slant distribution with angle . Example 5. Let denote the Euclidean space with global coordinatesequipped with a standard S-structure defined by We define a 4-dimensional submanifold M of by the smooth immersionwhere are fixed slant angles, and are constants. The tangent bundle of M is spanned by the orthonormal frame We define two orthogonal distributions as These vectors are not tangent to M, but the angle between each and the tangent space is constant (since their projections on lie in specific directions depending on fixed or ). Hence, is a slant distribution with slant angle , is a slant distribution with slant angle , and since , the whole tangent bundle is not slant.
Therefore, M is a proper bi-slant submanifold of the S-space form .
The normal bundle of M is spanned by the orthonormal vectors This construction satisfies all the required conditions for a bi-slant submanifold in the sense of Case 4 in [32]. 7. Conclusions and Future Directions
In this article, we have derived two sharp geometric inequalities involving the generalized normalized -Casorati curvatures for bi-slant submanifolds in S-space forms equipped with semi-symmetric metric connections. These inequalities deepen our understanding of the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic invariants in the context of submanifold geometry and extend several previously known results to a broader class of submanifolds. We have also examined the conditions under which equality is achieved and have provided geometric characterizations for those cases. To support our theoretical findings, illustrative examples were constructed.
Looking ahead, there are several promising directions for future research. One possible extension is to investigate analogous inequalities for other curvature-related invariants, such as scalar or mean curvature functions, in the same geometric setting. Another direction involves exploring similar results in broader ambient spaces, such as generalized S-space forms or statistical manifolds. Additionally, the role of -Casorati-type invariants in the context of warped product submanifolds or in almost-contact metric structures with other types of connections (e.g., quarter-symmetric) presents an interesting avenue for further study. These investigations may yield new insights and potential applications in both theoretical differential geometry and mathematical physics.