Rigidity of proper holomorphic mappings between nonequidimensional bounded symmetric domains

Abstract.

We prove that any proper holomorphic mapping from $D_{p,p-1}^I$ to $D_{p,p}^I(p\geq 3)$ is necessarily a totally geodesic isometric embedding with respect to their Bergman metrics and therefore is the standard linear embedding up to their automorphisms. The proof of the main result in this paper will be achieved by a differential-geometric study of a special class of complex geodesic curves on the bounded symmetric domains with respect to their Bergman metrics.