Bott periodicity for inclusions of symmetric spaces (Q1946056)

The authors investigate the beautiful differential geometry behind the classical Bott periodicity theorem, describing embedding constructions between the various chains of symmetric spaces appearing in the periodicity theorem. Recall that the Bott periodicity theorem states the following periodicity relation for the homotopy groups of classical Lie groups: The homotopy groups of the Lie groups \(U(n)\), \(SO(n)\) and \(Sp(n)\) satisfy the identities \(\pi_i(\mathrm{U}_n)=\pi_{i+2}(\mathrm{U}_n)\), \(\pi_i(\mathrm{SO}(n))=\pi_{i+8}(\mathrm{SO}(n))\) and \(\pi_i(\mathrm{Sp}(n))=\pi_{i+8}(\mathrm{Sp}(n))\). Today, there are various proofs of this result available. Bott's original approach associates to the three classes of groups chains of symmetric spaces \(P_{i+1}\subset P_{i}\), defined by totally geodesic embeddings. These chains are \(8\)-periodic for \(\mathrm{Sp}(n)\) and \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\) (resp. \(2\)-periodic for \(\mathrm{U}(n)\)). The authors establish connections between these chains of symmetric spaces constructing embeddings of the chain associated to \(\mathrm{O}(n)\) into the chain associated to \(\mathrm{U}(n)\) and of the chain associated to \(\mathrm{U}(n)\) into the chain associated to \(\mathrm{Sp}(n)\). On the way, they describe in great detail various aspects of the interesting geometry, relating the chains of symmetric spaces to centrioles and reflexive submanifolds.