Horospherical mean curvature functions and D'Atri spaces

Abstract

We consider simply connected Riemannian manifolds without conjugate points for which the horospherical mean curvature function is continuous, reversible and invariant under the geodesic flow. We show under mild additional curvature tensor conditions that rank one manifolds in this family are automatically asymptotically harmonic. In particular, compact rank one manifolds of this kind must be locally symmetric spaces of negative curvature. Moreover, we show under the same conditions that rank one D'Atri spaces without conjugate points are harmonic. An earlier result of this type was proved by Druetta for certain homogeneous D'Atri spaces.