scholarly journals Classification of totally real and totally geodesic submanifolds of compact 3-symmetric spaces

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-53
Author(s):  
Koji TOJO
1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Burns

In recent years a new approach to the study of compact symmetric spaces has been taken by Nagano and Chen [10]. This approach assigned to each pair of antipodal points on a closed geodesic a pair of totally geodesic submanifolds. In this paper we will show how these totally geodesic submanifolds can be used in conjunction with a theorem of Bott to compute homotopy in compact symmetric spaces. Some of the results are already known (see [1], [5], [11] for example) but we include them here for completeness and to illustrate this unified approach. We also exhibit a connection between the second homotopy group of a compact symmetric space and the multiplicity of the highest root. Using this in conjunction with a theorem of J. H. Cheng [6] we obtain a topological characterization of quaternionic symmetric spaces with antiquaternionic involutive isometry. The author would like to thank Prof T. Nagano for all his help and his detailed descriptions of the totally geodesic submanifolds mentioned above.


Author(s):  
Jürgen Berndt ◽  
Carlos Olmos

AbstractIn 1980, Oniščik [A. L. Oniščik, Totally geodesic submanifolds of symmetric spaces, Geometric methods in problems of algebra and analysis. Vol. 2, Yaroslav. Gos. Univ., Yaroslavl’ 1980, 64–85, 161] introduced the index of a Riemannian symmetric space as the minimal codimension of a (proper) totally geodesic submanifold. He calculated the index for symmetric spaces of rank {\leq 2}, but for higher rank it was unclear how to tackle the problem. In [J. Berndt, S. Console and C. E. Olmos, Submanifolds and holonomy, 2nd ed., Monogr. Res. Notes Math., CRC Press, Boca Raton 2016], [J. Berndt and C. Olmos, Maximal totally geodesic submanifolds and index of symmetric spaces, J. Differential Geom. 104 2016, 2, 187–217], [J. Berndt and C. Olmos, The index of compact simple Lie groups, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 49 2017, 5, 903–907], [J. Berndt and C. Olmos, On the index of symmetric spaces, J. reine angew. Math. 737 2018, 33–48], [J. Berndt, C. Olmos and J. S. Rodríguez, The index of exceptional symmetric spaces, Rev. Mat. Iberoam., to appear] we developed several approaches to this problem, which allowed us to calculate the index for many symmetric spaces. Our systematic approach led to a conjecture, formulated first in [J. Berndt and C. Olmos, Maximal totally geodesic submanifolds and index of symmetric spaces, J. Differential Geom. 104 2016, 2, 187–217], for how to calculate the index. The purpose of this paper is to verify the conjecture.


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