Geodesic orbit metrics in a class of homogeneous bundles over real and complex Stiefel manifolds

Abstract

Geodesic orbit spaces (or g.o. spaces) are defined as those homogeneous Riemannian spaces \((M=G/H,g)\) whose geodesics are orbits of one-parameter subgroups of G. The corresponding metric g is called a geodesic orbit metric. We study the geodesic orbit spaces of the form (G/H, g), such that G is one of the compact classical Lie groups \({{\,\mathrm{SO}\,}}(n)\), \(\mathrm{U}(n)\), and H is a diagonally embedded product \(H_1\times \cdots \times H_s\), where \(H_j\) is of the same type as G. This class includes spheres, Stiefel manifolds, Grassmann manifolds and real flag manifolds. The present work is a contribution to the study of g.o. spaces (G/H, g) with H semisimple.