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Dan Fox
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A complete surface of Gaussian curvature zero in Euclidean three space is a cylinder (where a cylinder means the surface generated by the lines parallel to a given axis passing through a fixed curve in the subspace perpendicular to the axis; the plane is a cylinder in this sense when the curve is itself a line). This is due to Pogorelov, although it is usually attributed to Hartman-Nirenberg (they attribute it to Pogorelov). It can be found proved as Theorem 1 in W. Massey's Surfaces of Gaussian curvature zero in Euclidean $3$-space or in part II of Hartman and Nirenberg's On spherical image maps whose Jacobians do not change sign (Hartman and Nirenberg prove a more general result, for hypersurfaces in Euclidean space of arbitrary dimension). The papers of Massey and Hartman-Nirenberg contain more detailed results applicable to the incomplete case.

Dan Fox
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  • 23