On isotropy irreducible Riemannian manifolds (Q808448)

A connected effective homogeneous space G/H is said to be isotropy irreducible if H is compact and \(Ad_ H\) acts irreducibly on \({\mathfrak g}/{\mathfrak h}\), where \({\mathfrak g}\), \({\mathfrak h}\) are the Lie algebras of G and H respectively. Further, if the identity component \(H_ 0\) of H also acts irreducibly on \({\mathfrak g}/{\mathfrak h}\), then G/H is called a strongly isotropy irreducible homogeneous space. The full classification of the strongly isotropy irreducible homogeneous spaces was given by E. Cartan, O. V. Manturov, J. H. Wolf and M. Krämer [\textit{E. Cartan}, Sur une classe remarquable d'espaces de Riemann. I, II. Bull. Soc. Math. Fr. 54, 214-264 (1926); 55, 114-134 (1927); Sur la structure des groupes de transformations finis et continus. Thèse, Paris (1894); \textit{O. V. Manturov}, Tr. Semin. Vektorn. Tenzorn. Anal. Prilozh. Geom. Mekh. Fiz. 13, 68-145 (1966; Zbl 0173.241); \textit{J. A. Wolf}, Acta Math. 120, 59- 148 (1968; Zbl 0157.521); correction, ibid. 152, 141-142 (1984; Zbl 0539.53037); \textit{M. Krämer}, Commun. Algebra 3, 691-737 (1975; Zbl 0309.22013)]. In the present paper the authors classify the simply connected, compact, isotropy irreducible and de Rham irreducible Riemannian manifolds which are not strongly isotropy irreducible and describe a structure of the compact isotropy irreducible homogeneous spaces G/H with G connected. It should be noted that a non-compact isotropic irreducible homogeneous spaces G/H is either flat or is a symmetric space of non-compact type [\textit{A. Besse}, Einstein manifolds (1987; Zbl 0613.53001)].