Weakly symmetric spaces and bounded symmetric domains (Q1377343)

Let \((M= G/K,g)\) be a homogeneous Riemannian manifold and \(I(M,g)\) its isometry group. Following A. Selberg, \((M,g)\) is said to be weakly symmetric if there exists an element \(\mu\in I(M,g)\) satisfying \(\mu G\mu^{-1} =G\) and \(\mu^2 \in G\) such that for any given \(x,y \in M\), there exists a \(\gamma\in G\) such that \(\gamma x= \mu y\) and \(\gamma y= \mu x\). These spaces generalize the symmetric spaces. As shown by Selberg, the algebra of \(G\)-invariant differential operators on \((M,g)\) is commutative. Selberg also provided non-symmetric examples by considering principal \(S^1\)-bundles over the Siegel half-space. Later on and for \(G=I(M,g)\), J. Berndt and the reviewer started a more systematic study of the Riemannian geometry of this class of spaces. Several equivalent definitions were discovered and used to construct a lot of new classes of examples. Since then, a lot more results have been discovered by these authors and also by D. Akhiezer and E. B. Vinberg, J. C. González-Dávila, O. Kowalski, R. Marinosci, S. Nagai, F. Ricci, H. Tamaru and W. Ziller. In particular, it led to a complete classification for all dimensions \(\leq 5\). It turns out that for these small dimensions, the class of simply connected weakly symmetric spaces coincides with that of the naturally reductive spaces, a result which does not hold anymore for higher dimensions. In the paper under review, the author's main result is that Selberg's construction extends to principal fiber bundles over Hermitian symmetric spaces. In this way he obtains a whole class of examples of weakly symmetric spaces which includes already known classes of examples. Particular attention is given to the case of classical irreducible bounded symmetric domains.