Polar actions with a fixed point (Q531712)

The main result of the paper under review is a classification of polar actions with a fixed point on (not necessarily compact or irreducible) symmetric spaces up to orbit equivalence. Polar actions on irreducible symmetric spaces of type I (i.e., compact with simple isometry group) of rank at least two and on the exceptional simple compact Lie groups with biinvariant metric have been classified by \textit{A. Kollross} [J. Differ. Geom. 77, No.~3, 425--482 (2007; Zbl 1139.53025); Transform. Groups 14, No.~2, 387--415 (2009; Zbl 1179.22014)]. As a by-product of his classification it turns out that polar actions on these spaces are automatically hyperpolar. The classification in the rank-one case had been achieved previously by \textit{F. Podestà} and \textit{G. Thorbergsson} [J. Differ. Geom. 53, No.~1, 131--175 (1999; Zbl 1040.53071)]; here, there exist polar, non-hyperpolar actions. The situation is different for noncompact symmetric spaces, as \textit{J. Berndt, J. C. Díaz-Ramos} and \textit{H. Tamaru} [J. Differ. Geom. 86, No.~2, 191--235 (2010; Zbl 1218.53030)] have shown the existence of homogeneous foliations on irreducible noncompact symmetric spaces of higher rank that admit a non-flat section. The authors' aim is to show that, restricted to actions with a fixed point, the compact and noncompact case still are very much alike, more precisely, dual to each other: they observe that, given a symmetric space \(G/K\) and a subgroup \(H\subset K\), the action by left multiplication on \(G/K\) is polar if and only if the \(H\)-action on the dual symmetric space \(G^*/K\) is polar. It is shown that a polar action on a symmetric space lifts to a polar action on the universal covering which is orbit equivalent to a product of several types of actions on the factors: trivial actions, a polar representation on the Euclidean factor, isotropy actions on the factors of higher rank, certain actions on the compact rank-one factors arising from the classification in the rank-one case, and their dual actions.