Affine images of Riemannian manifolds (Q415501)

Affine maps between metric spaces are those which preserve minimal geodesics together with their linear parametrizations. The paper gives a description of all affine maps \( f: M \to Y \) from a Riemannian manifold to a metric space by exhibiting, in fact for locally affine maps of this kind with complete \( M \), a factorization \( f = f_{i}\circ f_{a}\circ f_{p} \) where \( f_{p}: M \to M_{1} \) is a flat Riemannian submersion onto a complete Riemannian manifold, \( f_{a}: (M _{1},g) \to (M_{1}, |\cdot|) \) is an admissible change of metrics, and \( f_{i} \) is a locally isometric embedding. A submersion is flat, if all fibers are totally geodesic and the horizontal distribution is integrable. The property of \( f_{a} \) means the giving of a norm on each tangent space such that the norms of two vectors, related by holonomy along a piecewise smooth curve, coincide (such a family of norms is called a holonomy invariant Finsler structure). A special case of this main result is a complete description of non-homothetic locally affine maps in terms of products and symmetric spaces of higher rank. The proof includes the analysis of Lipschitz maps (Rademacher's theorem); it combines and simplifies former ideas from \textit{S.-i. Ohta} [Math. Z. 244, No. 1, 47--65 (2003; Zbl 1046.53047)] and \textit{P. Hitzelberger} and \textit{A. Lytchak} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 135, No. 7, 2263--2271 (2007; Zbl 1128.53021)]. For a locally affine map \( f \), the desired holonomy invariant Finsler structure is geometrically obtained in the following way: Denote, for given \( v \in TM \), by \( \gamma_{v} \) the geodesic with initial vector \( v \) and by \( |v|^{f} \) the velocity of the image geodesic \( f\circ\gamma_{v} \).