Weakly reflective submanifolds and austere submanifolds (Q1030018)

Let \(M\) be a reflective submanifold of a complete Riemannian manifold \(\tilde M\) defined by the involutive isometry, or reflection, \(\sigma_M\). Then, for any normal vector \(\xi \in T_x^\perp M\), \[ \sigma_M(x)=x,\qquad (d\sigma_M)_x\xi=-\xi,\qquad \sigma_M(M)=M \] The authors define a weakly reflective submanifold by weakening the above properties to allow for the isometry to vary with the normal vector \(\xi\). The authors focus mainly on orbits of irreducible \(s\)-representations which are an important class of homogeneous submanifolds in the hypersphere of Euclidean space. In particular, they give criteria which orbits are weakly reflective and which are austere. The paper concludes with some miscellaneous results concerning weakly reflective submanifolds in general.