Geodesic orbit Riemannian structures on \(\mathbf{R}^n\) (Q1629715)

A complete Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) is said to be a geodesic orbit manifold (GO-manifold) if every geodesic of \(M\) is an orbit of a one-parameter group of isometries. GO-manifolds are necessarily homogeneous. The aim of the present paper is to study both the geometry and the symmetry properties of GO-manifolds that are diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The main result of the paper is as follows: If \((M,g)\) is a GO-manifold diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^n\), then \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] \((M,g)\) is the total space of a Riemannian submersion \(\pi:M\longrightarrow P\), where the base space \(P\) is a Riemannian symmetric space of noncompact type. The fibers are totally geodesic and are isometric to a GO-nilmanifold \((N,g)\) of step size at most two, \item[(2)] \(M\) admits a simply-transitive solvable group of isometries of the form \(S\times N\), where \(S\) is an Iwasawa subgroup of a semisimple Lie group and \(N\) is the group in (1). \end{itemize} Along the way, various structural properties of more general GO-manifolds are established.