A note on totally geodesic maps

Let f:M.rarw.N be a smooth map between Rioemannian manifolds M and N. If f maps geodesics of M to geodesics of N, f is called totally geodesic. As is well known, totally geodesic maps are harmonic and the image f(M) of a totally geodesic map f:M.rarw. N is an immersed totally geodesic submanifold of N (cf. .cint. 6.3 of [W]). We are interested in the following question: When is a harmonic map f:M .rarw. N with rank .leq. 1 everywhere on M totally geodesic\ulcorner In other words, when is the image of a harmonic map f:M .rarw. N with rank .leq. 1 everywhere on M geodesics of N\ulcorner In this note, we give some sufficient conditions on curvatures of M. It is interesting that no curvature assumptions on target manifolds are necessary in Theorems 1 and 2. Some properties of totally geodesic maps are also given in Theorem 3. We think our Theorem 3 is somewhat unusual in view of the following classical theorem of Eells and Sampson (see pp.124 of [ES]).