A diameter gap for irreducible compact symmetric spaces of fixed rank

Abstract

We prove that, for every positive integer $r$, the positive normalized diameters of isometric quotients of simply connected irreducible compact Riemannian symmetric spaces of rank $r$ have a uniform positive lower bound. The bound is independent of the dimension and of the acting group, which need not be connected. For the higher-dimensional Grassmannian families, we obtain an explicit bound for positive-dimensional acting groups by constructing nonconstant invariant functions of bounded trigonometric degree. The real and complex cases use moment maps. The quaternionic case follows from a quartic rigidity theorem proved by means of invariant four-forms and the classification of compact quaternionic symmetric spaces. We also give examples showing why the rank and the relative scales of product factors must be controlled.