# Totally geodesic submanifolds of Damek-Ricci spaces and Einstein hypersurfaces of the Cayley projective plane

## TL;DR

This paper classifies totally geodesic submanifolds in Damek-Ricci spaces and Einstein hypersurfaces in the Cayley projective plane, revealing their geometric properties and restrictions.

## Contribution

It provides a complete classification of Einstein hypersurfaces in rank-one symmetric spaces and characterizes totally geodesic submanifolds in Damek-Ricci spaces.

## Key findings

- Totally geodesic submanifolds are either homogeneous Damek-Ricci spaces or rank-one symmetric spaces.
- Cayley hyperbolic plane admits no Einstein hypersurfaces.
- Einstein hypersurfaces in the Cayley projective plane are geodesic spheres of a specific radius.

## Abstract

We classify totally geodesic submanifolds of Damek-Ricci spaces and show that they are either homogeneous (such submanifolds are known to be "smaller" Damek-Ricci spaces) or isometric to rank-one symmetric spaces of negative curvature. As a by-product, we obtain that a totally geodesic submanifold of any known harmonic manifold is by itself harmonic. We prove that the Cayley hyperbolic plane admits no Einstein hypersurfaces and that the only Einstein hypersurfaces in the Cayley projective plane are geodesic spheres of a particular radius; this completes the classification of Einstein hypersurfaces in rank-one symmetric spaces. We also show that if a $2$-stein space admits a $2$-stein hypersurface, then both are of constant curvature, under some additional conditions.