Extrinsically Symmetric Spaces, Submanifolds of Clifford Type and a Theorem of Harish-Chandra

Abstract

We prove that a compact, intrinsically symmetric submanifold of a Euclidean space is extrinsically symmetric if and only if its maximal tori are Clifford tori in the ambient space. Moreover, we show that this result can be used to give a geometric proof of a result of Harish-Chandra on strongly orthogonal roots in semisimple Lie algebras.