Virtual immersions and a characterization of symmetric spaces (Q1729735)

A virtual immersion of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold into a pseudo-Euclidean vector space ${\mathbb{V}}$ is a natural bundle construction which generalizes the concept of isometric immersion of a Riemannian manifold into a vector space with a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form. For virtual immersions, a second fundamental form can be naturally defined and it is not symmetric in general. A virtual immersion is locally induced by an isometric immersion if and only if the second fundamental form is symmetric. Virtual immersions into a Euclidean vector space ${\mathbb{V}}$ were studied in a previous paper, in a different context. It was proved that in that situation, virtual immersion with skew-symmetric second fundamental form exist only for compact symmetric spaces. In the present paper, this result is extended for virtual immersions into a pseudo-Euclidean vector space ${\mathbb{V}}$. It is proved that virtual immersion with skew-symmetric second fundamental form exist only for symmetric spaces and this virtual immersion is unique in this situation. These natural constructions provide an interesting, alternative approach to symmetric spaces and probably also to various related situations.