Asymptotic total geodesy of local holomorphic curves exiting a bounded symmetric domain and applications to a uniformization problem for algebraic subsets

Abstract: The current article stems from our study on the asymptotic behavior of holomorphic isometric embeddings of the Poincar\'e disk into bounded symmetric domains. As a first result we prove that any holomorphic curve exiting the boundary of a bounded symmetric domain $\Omega$ must necessarily be asymptotically totally geodesic. Assuming otherwise we derive by the method of rescaling a hypothetical holomorphic isometric embedding of the Poincar\'e disk with ${\rm Aut}(\Omega')$-equivalent tangent spaces into a tube domain $\Omega' \subset \Omega$ and derive a contradiction by means of the Poincar\'e-Lelong equation. We deduce that equivariant holomorphic embeddings between bounded symmetric domains must be totally geodesic. Furthermore, we solve a uniformization problem on algebraic subsets $Z \subset \Omega$. More precisely, if $\check \Gamma\subset {\rm Aut}(\Omega)$ is a torsion-free discrete subgroup leaving $Z$ invariant such that $Z/\check \Gamma$ is compact, we prove that $Z \subset \Omega$ is totally geodesic. In particular, letting $\Gamma \subset{\rm Aut}(\Omega)$ be a torsion-free cocompact lattice, and $\pi: \Omega \to \Omega/\Gamma =: X_\Gamma$ be the uniformization map, a subvariety $Y \subset X_\Gamma$ must be totally geodesic whenever some (and hence any) irreducible component $Z$ of $\pi^{-1}(Y)$ is an algebraic subset of $\Omega$. For cocompact lattices this yields a characterization of totally geodesic subsets of $X_\Gamma$ by means of bi-algebraicity without recourse to the celebrated monodromy result of Andr\'e-Deligne on subvarieties of Shimura varieties, and as such our proof applies to not necessarily arithmetic cocompact lattices.