A variational problem for submanifolds in a sphere

Let be an n-dimensional submanifold in an (n + p)-dimensional unit sphere S ^{n + p} , M is called a Willmore submanifold (see [11], [16]) if it is a critical submanifold to the Willmore functional , where is the square of the length of the second fundamental form, H is the mean curvature of M. In [11], the second author proved an integral inequality of Simons’ type for n-dimensional compact Willmore submanifolds in S ^{n + p} . In this paper, we discover that a similar integral inequality of Simons’ type still holds for the critical submanifolds of the functional . Moreover, it has the advantage that the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equation is simpler than the Willmore equation.