The isometries of the space of K\"ahler metrics

Abstract

Given a compact K\"ahler manifold, we prove that all global isometries of the space of K\"ahler metrics are induced by biholomorphisms and anti-biholomorphisms of the manifold. In particular, there exist no global symmetries for Mabuchi's metric. Moreover, we show that the Mabuchi completion does not even admit local symmetries. Closely related to these findings, we provide a large class of metric geodesic segments that can not be extended at one end, pointing out the first such examples in the literature.