Stationary Curvatures of Two-Dimensional Totally Geodesic Submanifolds in the Grassmannian of Bivectors

An infinitesimal criterion indicating when a two-dimensional submanifold of a Riemannian symmetric space is totally geodesic is given. As an application, the classification of two-dimensional totally geodesic submanifolds of the Grassmannian of bivectors is given in a new way, and it is proved that the sectional curvature takes stationary values on tangent spaces of such submanifolds. Bibliography: 9 titles.