Riemannian <Emphasis Type="Italic">M</Emphasis>-spaces with homogeneous geodesics

We investigate homogeneous geodesics in a class of homogeneous spaces called M-spaces, which are defined as follows. Let G / K be a generalized flag manifold with \(K=C(S)=S\times K_1\), where S is a torus in a compact simple Lie group G and \(K_1\) is the semisimple part of K. Then, the associated M-space is the homogeneous space \(G/K_1\). These spaces were introduced and studied by H. C. Wang in 1954. We prove that for various classes of M-spaces the only g.o. metric is the standard metric. For other classes of M-spaces we give either necessary, or necessary and sufficient conditions, so that a G-invariant metric on \(G/K_1\) is a g.o. metric. The analysis is based on properties of the isotropy representation \(\mathfrak {m}=\mathfrak {m}_1\oplus \cdots \oplus \mathfrak {m}_s\) of the flag manifold G / K as \({{\mathrm{Ad}}}(K)\)-modules].