EN
The family of cones is one of typical models of non-cylindrical ruled surfaces. Among them, the circular cones are unique in the sense that their Gauss map satisfies a partial differential equation similar, though not identical, to one characterizing the so-called 1-type submanifolds. Specifically, for the Gauss map G of a circular cone, one has ΔG = f(G+C), where Δ is the Laplacian operator, f is a non-zero function and C is a constant vector. We prove that circular cones are characterized by being the only non-cylindrical ruled surfaces with ΔG = f(G+C) for a nonzero constant vector C.