Curvature and conjugate points in Lorentz symmetric spaces (Q2655206)

The authors study some relations between conjugate points and curvature in locally symmetric Lorentzian manifolds. Let \(M\) be a locally symmetric Lorentzian manifold. It is known that there exist compact quotients of some spaces which have non-positive curvature for all time-like planes, so it is natural to ask whether \(M\) has non-positive curvature for all its time-like planes. The authors give a positive answer. They show that if \((M,g)\) is a compact Lorenz symmetric space, then the sectional curvature \(\kappa(\sigma)\) is non-positive for any time-like plane \(\sigma\) and the light-like sectional curvature \({\mathcal K}_v(\sigma)\) is non-negative for any degenerate plane \(\sigma\) and any light-like vector \(v\in\sigma\). Also, they compute the light-like conjugate loci of Cahen-Wallach manifolds, which are important examples of symmetric Lorentzian spaces.