Almost invariant submanifolds for compact group actions (Q1566803)

It is a classical result of Élie Cartan that a compact Lie group \(G\) acting by isometries on a simply connected Riemannian manifold has a fixed point. This result was established averaging orbits of the \(G\) action on affine convex sets using the natural biinvariant metric on \(G\). An extension to arbitrary manifolds was given in [\textit{K. Grove} and \textit{H. Karcher}, Math. Z. 132, 11-20 (1973; Zbl 0254.57032)] under the assumption that the group action has an orbit which is sufficiently small relative to the distance scale given by the geometry of \(M\). In the present paper, the author extends this result from points to submanifolds. To obtain this, he develops a method for averaging nearby submanifolds in a Riemannian manifold. More precisely, he defines a \(C^1\) distance between submanifolds of a Riemannian manifold and establishes that, if a Riemannian \(G\)-manifold \(M\) has a compact submanifold \(N\) whose images under the \(G\)-action are sufficiently \(C^1\) close to one another, relative to the geometry of the pair \((M,N)\), then there is a \(G\)-invariant submanifold near \(N\).