On fibre bundle structures of Stiefel manifolds related to the octonions (Q897432)

The paper is devoted to the study of the real Stiefel manifolds \(V_k(\mathbb{R}^n)=\mathrm{SO}(n)/\mathrm{SO}(n-k)\) for \(n=7\) or \(n=8\). Under the standard identifications of \(\mathbb{R}^7\) and \(\mathbb{R}^8\) with \(\operatorname{Im} \mathbb{O}\) and \(\mathbb{O}\), where \(\mathbb{O}\) is the Cayley algebra of octonions, we get \(V_2(\mathbb{R}^7)=G_2/\mathrm{SU}(2)\), \(V_2(\mathbb{R}^8)=\mathrm{Spin}(7)/\mathrm{SU}(3)\), and \(V_3(\mathbb{R}^8)=\mathrm{Spin}(7)/\mathrm{SU}(2)\). The authors obtain the orbit decompositions of Stiefel manifolds related to the octonions \(\mathbb{O}\) under the action of Lie groups \(G_2\) and \(\mathrm{Spin}(7)\).