Rigidity of proper holomorphic maps between bounded symmetric domains

Our first main result gives assumptions guaranteeing that proper holomorphic maps between Cartan type I bounded symmetric domains have simple block matrix shape, answering positively a question of Mok. The proof is based on the second main result establishing similar phenomenon for local CR maps between arbitrary boundary components of two bounded symmetric domains of the above type. Since boundary components other than Shilov boundaries are Levi-degenerate, our analysis is based on their $2$-nondegeneracy combining Levi forms with higher order tensors.