Higher order symmetric spaces and the roots of the identity in a Lie group

Let denote the set of all -roots of the identity in a Lie group . We show that is always an embedded submanifold of , having the conjugacy classes of its elements as open submanifolds. These conjugacy classes are examples of -symmetric spaces and we show, more generally, that every -symmetric space of a Lie group is a covering manifold of an embedded submanifold of . We compute also the Hessian of the inclusions of and into , relative to the natural connection on the domain and to the symmetric connection on .