Generalizing axioms of r-planes and r-spheres on Riemannian and K\"ahler manifolds

The famous theorems of Cartan, related to the axiom of $r$-planes, and Leung-Nomizu about the axiom of $r$-spheres were extended to K\"ahler geometry by several authors. In this paper we replace the strong notions of totally geodesic submanifolds ($r$-planes) and extrinsic spheres ($r$-spheres) by a wider class of special isometric immersions such that theorems of type "axioms of $r$-special submanifolds" could hold. We verify also that there are plenty of special submanifolds in real and complex space forms and, in the codimension one case, in Einstein manifolds.