Geodesic spheres in Grassmann manifolds

Abstract

Let G,(F) denote the Grassmann manifold consisting of all n-dimensional subspaces of a left /c-dimensional hermitian vectorspce F , where F is the real number field, the complex number field, or the algebra of real quater- nions. We view Cn, (1') tS t Riemnnian symmetric space in the usual way, and study the connected totally geodesic submanifolds B in which any two distinct elements have zero intersection as subspaces of F*. Our main result (Theorem 4 in 8) states that the submanifold B is a compact Riemannian symmetric spce of rank one, and gives the conditions under which it is a sphere. The rest of the paper is devoted to the classification (up to a global isometry of G,(F)) of those submanifolds B which ure isometric to spheres (Theorem 8 in 13). If B is not a sphere, then it is a real, complex, or quater- nionic projective space, or the Cyley projective plane; these submanifolds will be studied in a later paper [11].