Geodesic orbit manifolds and Killing fields of constant length

Yu. G. Nikonorov

Published 2011-04-14, updated 2011-04-28Version 2

The goal of this paper is to clarify connections between Killing fields of constant length on a Rimannian geodesic orbit manifold $(M,g)$ and the structure of its full isometry group. The Lie algebra of the full isometry group of $(M,g)$ is identified with the Lie algebra of Killing fields $\mathfrak{g}$ on $(M,g)$. We prove the following result: If $\mathfrak{a}$ is an abelian ideal of $\mathfrak{g}$, then every Killing field $X\in \mathfrak{a}$ has constant length. On the ground of this assertion we give a new proof of one result of C. Gordon: Every Riemannian geodesic orbit manifold of nonpositive Ricci curvature is a symmetric space.