Submanifolds with constant principal curvatures in symmetric spaces (Q6598523)

In the literature there exist several nonequivalent concepts of what it means for a submanifold \(P\subseteq M\) of an ambient Riemannian manifold to have constant principal curvatures. Perhaps one of the most natural ones is to ask that the principal curvatures of \(P\), counted with multiplicities, be independent on the choice of unit normal direction (which the authors call CPC submanifolds). Such objects appear naturally as singular orbits of cohomogeneity one actions and, more generally, as focal sets of isoparametric hypersurfaces with constant principal curvatures. They also include totally geodesic submanifolds as a subfamily, and provide examples of austere submanifolds.\N\NIn this paper, the authors construct a large family of non-totally geodesic CPC submanifolds for any symmetric space of noncompact type by means of the solvable model of the symmetric space. Every symmetric space of noncompact type \(M=G/K\) can be regarded as a solvable subgroup \(AN\) equipped with a left-invariant metric, where \(G=KAN\) is an Iwasawa decomposition of \(G\). Therefore, any subgroup \(S\subseteq AN\) can be identified with a homogeneous submanifold in \(M\) of its same dimension. By working with the root space decomposition of the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\), the authors provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a subalgebra of the form \(\mathfrak{s}=\mathfrak{a}\oplus(\mathfrak{n}\ominus V)\) (where \(\mathfrak{n}\ominus V\) is the orthogonal complement on \(\mathfrak{n}\) of some vector space \(V\subseteq \mathfrak{n}\)) to give rise to a CPC submanifold. Moreover, the authors also find conditions for \(\mathfrak{s}\) in order to determine when such submanifolds can appear as singular orbits of cohomogeneity one actions.