On harmonic and 2-stein spaces of Iwasawa type. (Q1405270)

A Riemannian manifold \(M\) is called harmonic if its small geodesic spheres have constant mean curvature. Clearly, two-point homogeneous spaces are harmonic. The Lichnerowicz conjecture, stating that the converse is also true, remained an open problem for quite a long time, until \textit{E. Darmek} and \textit{F. Ricci} [J. Geom. Anal. 2, 213--248 (1992; Zbl 0788.43008)] provided the only known counterexamples, the class of the so-called Damek-Ricci spaces. In the paper under review, the author studies harmonicity on solvable metric Lie groups of Iwasawa type, proving that a harmonic space of Iwasawa type must have algebraic rank one. Damek-Ricci spaces are proved to be the only Carnot solvmanifolds which are harmonic. This rigidity result is still valid by replacing harmonicity with the weaker 2-stein condition. A harmonic space is necessarily 2-stein, that is, its curvature tensor \(R\) satisfies to \((R^k_x)= \mu_k| X|^{2k}\), where \(k= 1,2,\) and \(\mu_s\), \(\mu_2\) are constant.