Riemannian flag manifolds with homogeneous geodesics

A geodesic in a Riemannian homogeneous manifold is called a homogeneous geodesic if it is an orbit of a one-parameter subgroup of the Lie group . We investigate -invariant metrics with homogeneous geodesics (i.e., such that all geodesics are homogeneous) when is a flag manifold, that is, an adjoint orbit of a compact semisimple Lie group . We use an important invariant of a flag manifold , its -root system, to give a simple necessary condition that admits a non-standard -invariant metric with homogeneous geodesics. Hence, the problem reduces substantially to the study of a short list of prospective flag manifolds. A common feature of these spaces is that their isotropy representation has two irreducible components. We prove that among all flag manifolds of a simple Lie group , only the manifold of complex structures in , and the complex projective space admit a non-naturally reductive invariant metric with homogeneous geodesics. In all other cases the only -invariant metric with homogeneous geodesics is the metric which is homothetic to the standard metric (i.e., the metric associated to the negative of the Killing form of the Lie algebra of ). According to F. Podestà and G.Thorbergsson (2003), these manifolds are the only non-Hermitian symmetric flag manifolds with coisotropic action of the stabilizer.