On the total mean curvature of a compact space-like submanifold in Lorentz–Minkowski spacetime

By means of several counterexamples, the impossibility to obtain an analogue of the Chen lower estimation for the total mean curvature of any compact submanifold in Euclidean space for the case of compact space-like submanifolds in Lorentz–Minkowski spacetime is shown. However, a lower estimation for the total mean curvature of a four-dimensional compact space-like submanifold that factors through the light cone of six-dimensional Lorentz–Minkowski spacetime is proved by using a technique completely different from Chen's original one. Moreover, the equality characterizes the totally umbilical four-dimensional round spheres in Lorentz–Minkowski spacetime. Finally, three applications are given. Among them, an extrinsic upper bound for the first non-trivial eigenvalue of the Laplacian of the induced metric on a four-dimensional compact space-like submanifold that factors through the light cone is proved.