Killing Forms on Symmetric Spaces

Abstract

Killing forms on Riemannian manifolds are differential forms whose covariant derivative is totally skew--symmetric. We show that a compact simply connected symmetric space carries a non--parallel Killing $p$--form ($p\ge2$) if and only if it isometric to a Riemannian product $S^k\times N$, where $S^k$ is a round sphere and $k>p$.