On the realization of Riemannian symmetric spaces in Lie groups (Q818344)

Let \(G/K\) be a Riemannian symmetric space, where \(G\) is a Lie group and \(H\subset G\) the subgroup consisting of the fixed points of an involution \(\sigma:G\to G\). There is a direct sum decomposition \(\mathfrak g=\mathfrak p\oplus\mathfrak k\), where \(\mathfrak g,\mathfrak k\) are the Lie algebras of \(G\) and \(K\), respectively, and \(\mathfrak p\) is a complementary subspace on which \(\sigma_\ast\) acts as \(-\text{Id}\). The authors prove in section 2 that \(\mathfrak p\) is mapped under the exponential \(\exp:\mathfrak g\to G\) onto a closed submanifold \(P\subset G\) and that \(P\) is naturally diffeomorphic to \(G/K\). The main result (Theorem 2.2) states that \(P=Q=R_0=R_0'=R^2\), where \(Q=\{g\,\sigma(g)^{-1}\mid g\in G\}\), \(R=\{g\in G\mid \sigma(g)=g^{-1}\}\) and \(R_0,R_0'\subset R\) are the connected and pathwise connected components, respectively, of the identity element. From this, the closedness of \(P\) is derived and the evidence that the map \(\varphi:gK\in G/K\to g\,\sigma(g)^{-1}\in G\) is an equivariant diffeomorphism between \(G/K\) and \(P\). In Section 3 the question is discussed, how far \(P\) is from being a global section of the principal fibre bundle \(G\to G/K\). Among other results it is shown that \(gK\cap P\neq \emptyset\) for each coset \(gK\), \(g\in G\), and that almost all cosets intersect \(P\) transversally.