Canonical sphere bundles of the Grassmann manifold (Q2334099)

Let \(H\) be a complex Hilbert space, let \(\mathcal{B}(H)\) be the algebra of bounded operators, and let \(\mathcal{P}(H)\) be the set of all orthogonal projections on \(H\). The unitary group of \(\mathcal{B}(H)\) is denoted by \(\mathcal{U}(H)\). This paper is mainly devoted to the study of the differential and metric structure of the set \(\mathcal{R}=\{(P,f )\in\mathcal{P}(H)\times H :Pf=f,|f|=1\}\), which is regarded as a topological subspace of \(\mathcal{B}(H)\times H\), where \(\mathcal{B}(H)\) is endowed with its operator norm topology. It is the total space of the canonical sphere bundle given by \(\pi_{\mathcal{R}}:\mathcal{R}\to\mathcal{P}(H)\), \(\pi_{\mathcal{R}}(P,f)=P)\). In addition, \(\mathcal{U}(H)\) acts on \(\mathcal{R}\) by \(U\cdot (P,f)=(UPU^*,Uf),U\in\mathcal{U}(H),(P,f)\in\mathcal{R}\). The authors show that the connected components of \(\mathcal{R}\) are homogeneous spaces. In fact, they show that the connected components of \(\mathcal{R}\) coincide with orbits given by the above action. They prove that each orbit is a smooth homogeneous space of \(\mathcal{U}(H)\) and a submanifold of \(\mathcal{B}(H)\times H\). Further, they study the metric structure of \(\mathcal{R}\) by endowing it with the uniform quotient metric. They then establish minimality results for the geodesics. The Riemannian geometry of the canonical sphere bundle of the restricted Grassmannian is studied. It is shown that the total space of this bundle is \(\mathcal{R}_2^+=\{(P,f)\in\mathcal{R}:P\in\mathcal{P}_2^+(H)\}\), where \(\mathcal{P}_2^+(H)\) denotes the connected component containing a fixed projection \(P_+\) in the restricted Grassmannian. In addition, they endow \(\mathcal{R}_2^+\) with two different Riemannian metrics: the ambient metric and the reductive metric. It turn out these metrics to be equivalent and complete. The geodesics of the reductive metric are also computed.