SPACE CURVES SATISFYING $\Delta$H = AH

Let x : $M^{n}$ .rarw. $E^{m}$ be an isometric immersion of a manifold $M^{n}$ into the Euclidean space $E^{m}$ and .DELTA. the Laplacian of $M^{n}$ defined by -div.omicron.grad. The family of such immersions satisfying the condition .DELTA.x = .lambda.x, .lambda..mem.R, is characterized by a well known result ot Takahashi (8]): they are either minimal in $E^{m}$ or minimal in some Euclidean hypersphere. As a generalization of Takahashi's result, many authors ([3,6,7]) studied the hypersurfaces $M^{n}$ in $E^{n+1}$ satisfying .DELTA.x = Ax + b, where A is a square matrix and b is a vector in $E^{n+1}$, and they proved independently that such hypersurfaces are either minimal in $E^{n+1}$ or hyperspheres or spherical cylinders. Since .DELTA.x = -nH, the submanifolds mentioned above satisfy .DELTA.H = .lambda.H or .DELTA.H = AH, where H is the mean curvature vector field of M. And the family of hypersurfaces satisfying .DELTA.H = .lambda.H was explored for some cases in [4]. In this paper, we classify space curves x : R .rarw. $E^{3}$ satisfying .DELTA.x = Ax + b or .DELTA.H = AH, and find conditions for such curves to be equivalent.alent.alent.