Virtual immersions and minimal hypersurfaces in compact symmetric spaces (Q2217797)

The authors study how the index of minimal submanifolds (mainly, hypersurfaces) and the first Betti number are related. The main result tells that if \((M, g)\) is a compact symmetric space, \(G\) its isometry group, and \(\Sigma\subset M\) a closed, immersed minimal hypersurface, then \(\mathrm{ind}_0(\Sigma)\ge \Big(\begin{array}{c} \dim G \\ 2 \\ \end{array}\Big)^{-1} b_1(\Sigma)\), where \(\mathrm{ind}_0\) is the sum of index and nullity. If either \(\Sigma\) satisfies a certain gene\-rality condition, or \((M, g)\) is the product of two CROSSes, this inequality is improved to a lower bound on the index alone, which is affine in the first Betti number. To prove these results, the authors introduce a generalization of isometric immersions of Riemannian manifolds in Euclidean space (an example is the differential of an isometric immersion).