English

Random Manifolds have no Totally Geodesic Submanifolds

Differential Geometry 2018-01-19 v2

Abstract

For n4n\geq 4 we show that generic closed Riemannian nn-manifolds have no nontrivial totally geodesic submanifolds, answering a question of Spivak. An immediate consequence is a severe restriction on the isometry group of a generic Riemannian metric. Both results are widely believed to be true, but we are not aware of any proofs in the literature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.09240,
  title  = {Random Manifolds have no Totally Geodesic Submanifolds},
  author = {Thomas Murphy and Frederick Wilhelm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.09240},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

V2: minor changes to address referees' reports, calculations in the local construction have been made more explicit. To appear in Michigan Math. J

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:58:24.525Z