Symmetric spaces of Hermitian type (Q1311956)

A causal structure of a manifold \(M\) is a set of open regular convex cones in the tangent spaces of \(M\) (viz. the positive light cone of a Lorentzian metric). If \(M\) is a homogeneous space and the causal structure is invariant under \(G\), then it suffices to specify the cone at a base point. This cone will then be invariant under the action of the stabilizer group of that base point. If now \(M=G/H\) is a semisimple symmetric space, \(\tau\) the corresponding involution and \({\mathfrak g}= {\mathfrak h}+{\mathfrak q}\) the decomposition into the \(\pm1\)-eigenspaces of \(\tau\), then an invariant causal structure is given by a proper generating \(H\)-invariant cone in \({\mathfrak q}\). The existence of such cones puts severe restrictions on the structure of \(M\). In fact, they either intersect \({\mathfrak k}\) or \({\mathfrak p}\), where \({\mathfrak g}={\mathfrak k}+{\mathfrak p}\) is a Cartan decomposition compatible with \(\tau\) and the two cases are in duality via \({\mathfrak h}+{\mathfrak q} \leftrightarrow{\mathfrak h}+i{\mathfrak q}\). The first of the two cases gives precisely the symmetric spaces of Hermitian type which had been introduced before by the author and B. Orsted for the construction of a symmetric space version of holomorphic discrete series representations using a centralizer condition. Suppose that \(M=G/H\) is of Hermitian type. Then the Riemannian symmetric space \(D=G/K\) associated with \(G\) is a complex bounded domain. The author shows that \(\tau\) induces a complex conjugation on \(D\), compares the classification of spaces of Hermitian type to other classes of symmetric spaces (parahermitian, regular), and describes various results concerning the classification of invariant causal structures on symmetric spaces of Hermitian type.