Non-existence of orthogonal coordinates on the complex and quaternionic projective spaces (Q778995)

Riemannian metrics which admit a coordinate system in which the metric has diagonal form naturally appear in many problems. In a previous work it was proved that up to dimension \(3\), every metric admits such a coordinate system. It was also observed that it is probably not true in general in higher dimension. In the present paper, it is proved that complex projective spaces \({\mathbb{C}}P^m\) and quaternionic projective spaces \({\mathbb{H}}P^m\) (for \(q\geq 2\)) do not admit such a coordinate system.