Tangent Lie groups are Riemannian naturally reductive spaces (Q2361360): Difference between revisions

The authors continue the study of naturally reductive metrics, that was initiated in [the first author et al., Differ. Geom. Appl. 39, 59--92 (2015; Zbl 1435.53040)]. In that paper, the classification of naturally reductive Riemannian spaces of dimension \(\leq 6\) was obtained. In particular, special naturally reductive metrics on the space \(S^3 \ltimes \mathbb{R}^3\) were discovered. Note that \(S^3 \ltimes \mathbb{R}^3\) gives an example of tangent Lie groups, that are defined as follows: Let \(G\) be a compact Lie group with the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\). Then the group \(G \ltimes_{\text{Ad}}\mathfrak{g}\), where \(\mathfrak{g}\) is considered as an abelian Lie group with respect to addition and \(\text{Ad}\) is the adjoint representation, is called tangent Lie group of \(G\). For \(G=\mathrm{SU}(2)\) we get the above example. The main result of the paper is contained in Theorem 2.5: Let \(G\) be a compact connected Lie group \(G\), then its tangent Lie group \(TG=G \ltimes_{\text{Ad}}\mathfrak{g}\) admits a two-parameter family of left-invariant naturally reductive Riemannian metrics. The authors give an explicit construction of such metrics, as well as the corresponding metric connections with skew torsion, and discuss their properties. An alternative spinorial description of the mentioned connections leads (Section 3) to a similar construction of naturally reductive metrics on \(TS^7\), that is in many senses almost a tangent Lie group. One of the important ingredients of the above construction is the fact that every compact Lie group with bi-invariant Riemannian metric satisfies the Killing property in sense of \textit{J. E. D'Atri} and \textit{H. K. Nickerson} [J. Differ. Geom. 2, 393--409 (1968; Zbl 0179.50601)], i.e., admits an orthonormal frame, consisting of Killing vector fields. It should be noted that the sphere \(S^7\) of constant curvature also satisfies the Killing property. Recall also the classification of Riemannian manifolds with the Killing property, obtained in [\textit{V. N. Berestovskii} and \textit{Yu. G. Nikonorov}, J. Differ. Geom. 82, No. 3, 467--500 (2009; Zbl 1179.53043)]: A complete, simply connected Riemannian manifold has the Killing property if and only if it is a direct metric product of a Euclidean space, \(7\)-dimensional spheres of constant sectional curvature, and compact simply connected simple Lie groups equipped with bi-invariant Riemannian metrics. In the final part of the paper (Appendix A), the authors discuss some naturally reductive metrics on the Lie groups of the type \(G\times G\), where \(G\) is connected compact Lie group.