Classification results for biharmonic submanifolds in spheres

We study biharmonic submanifolds of the Euclidean sphere that satisfy certain geometric properties. We classify: (i) the biharmonic hypersurfaces with at most two distinct principal curvatures; (ii) the conformally flat biharmonic hypersurfaces. We obtain some rigidity results for pseudoumbilical biharmonic submanifolds of codimension 2 and for biharmonic surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector field. We also study the type, in the sense of B-Y. Chen, of compact proper biharmonic submanifolds with constant mean curvature in spheres. Dedicated to Professor Vasile Oproiu on his 65th birthday The first author was supported by a INdAM doctoral fellowship, Italy. The second author was supported by PRIN 2005, Italy. The third author was supported by Grant CEEX ET 5871/2006, Romania