A note on the uniqueness of the canonical connection of a naturally reductive space (Q387548): Difference between revisions

Connections with skew-torsion, first investigated by E. Cartan, are metric connections with the same geodesics as the Levi-Civita connection. The canonical connection of a naturally reductive space provides a distinguished example of a connection with skew-torsion. In [J. Reine Angew. Math. 664, 29--53 (2012; Zbl 1241.53045)] the same authors proved that the canonical connection of a (locally irreducible) compact naturally reductive space is unique, unless the space is either a sphere, a real projective space, or a compact Lie group with a bi-invariant metric. A key point in proving this result was a decomposition theorem which is specific for compact homogeneous spaces and false in the non-compact case. In this paper, the authors extend the previous result to the non-compact case, proving that the canonical connection of a simply connected irreducible naturally reductive non-compact space is unique, except when the space is the symmetric dual of a compact Lie group with a bi-invariant metric. In particular, this result applies to the real hyperbolic space (of dimension \(n\neq 3\)). Finally, the authors also provide an explicit computation of the isometry group of a compact and locally irreducible naturally reductive space.