Parallel submanifolds with an intrinsic product structure

Let $M$ and $N$ be Riemannian symmetric spaces and $f:M\to N$ be a parallel isometric immersion. We additionally assume that there exist simply connected, irreducible Riemannian symmetric spaces $M_i$ with $\dim(M_i)\geq 2$ for $i=1,...,r$ such that $M\cong M_1\times...\times M_r$ . As a starting point, we describe how the intrinsic product structure of $M$ is reflected by a distinguished, fiberwise orthogonal direct sum decomposition of the corresponding first normal bundle. Then we consider the (second) osculating bundle \osc f, which is a $\nabla^N$-parallel vector subbundle of the pullback bundle $f^*TN$, and establish the existence of $r$ distinguished, pairwise commuting, $\nabla^N$-parallel vector bundle involutions on \osc f . Consequently, the "extrinsic holonomy Lie algebra" of \osc f bears naturally the structure of a graded Lie algebra over the Abelian group which is given by the direct sum of $r$ copies of $\Z/2 \Z$ . Our main result is the following: Provided that $N$ is of compact or non-compact type, that $\dim(M_i)\geq 3$ for $i=1,...,r$ and that none of the product slices through one point of $M$ gets mapped into any flat of $N$, we can show that $f(M)$ is a homogeneous submanifold of $N$ .Comment: 25 pages, Appendix A added, a few corrections, new numbering of the theorem