Substantial Riemannian submersions of \(S^{15}\) with 7-dimensional fibres (Q1386781)

In 1988, \textit{D. Gromoll} and \textit{K. Grove} published an article on ``metric'' foliations of Euclidean spheres [J. Differ. Geom. 28, 143-156 (1988; Zbl 0683.53030)]. Therefrom one can conclude that a Riemannian submersion \(\pi:S^n\to M\) with connected fibres is congruent to a Hopf fibration or \(n=15\) and \(\dim M=8\). In the article under review, the author shows that in the latter case \(\pi\) is the Hopf fibration \(S^{15} \to S^8\) provided that \(\pi\) is substantial along each fibre, that means, if the horizontal subbundle corresponding to \(\pi\) is far from being integrable: for every point \(p\in S^{15}\) there exists a horizontal vector \(x\in T_p S^{15}\) such that the O'Neill operator \(A_x: {\mathcal H}_p \to {\mathcal V}_p\) from the horizontal to the vertical subspace is surjective. From the article mentioned above follows that \(\pi\) is already substantial, if at least one fibre of \(\pi\) is totally geodesic.