Gottlieb groups of homogeneous spaces (Q1764667)

This paper studies the Gottlieb groups of some homogeneous spaces. Namely the sphere \(S^2\), the quaternionic projective \(n\)-space \(\mathbb{H} P^n\) and Stiefel manifolds. In the case of the sphere \(S^2\) the authors show that \(G_n(S^2)=0\) for \(n=1,2\) and it equals \(\pi_n(S^2)\) for \(n>2\). For the quaternionic projective \(n\)-space they estimate the group \(G_k(\mathbb{H} P^n)\) under the hypothesis that \(\pi_k(\mathbb{H} P^n)\) is infinite and \(\pi_k(Sp(n)\times Sp(1))\) is finite. Applications are given for \(k=4n+2\). For Stiefel manifolds several examples are shown where certain Gottlieb groups are infinite. As a consequence some results on homogeneous spaces involving the exceptional Lie groups are obtained. The authors use the main theorem from \textit{J. Siegel} [Pac. J. Math. 31, 209-214 (1969; Zbl 0183.51701)], which relates the homotopy groups of a Lie group Y and the Gottlieb groups of a homogeneous space as an important tool.