On the structure of the automorphism group of 2-dimensional Laguerre planes (Q1813553)

This is a fundamental paper on the structure of the group \(\Gamma\) of (continuous) automorphisms of a locally compact topological Laguerre plane with 2-dimensional point set. It is well known that \(\Gamma\) is a Lie group. The Laguerre planes of this kind having an automorphism group \(\Gamma\) of dimension at least 5 have been completely determined by \textit{R. Löwen} and \textit{U. Pfüller} [Geom. Dedicata 23, 87--96 (1987; Zbl 0615.51007)] on the basis of \textit{U. Pfüller}'s dissertation [``Topologische Laguerre-Ebenen'', Erlangen (1986; Zbl 0589.51026)]. The author now sets out to extend this classification to the cases with \(\dim \Gamma=4\). The present paper contains general results on the structure of \(\Gamma\), irrespective of its dimension. These results will be very useful for the author's classification project. The automorphism leaving every parallel class of points invariant constitute a partial subgroup \(T\) of \(\Gamma\). It is shown that \(T\) is solvable. The main result concerns more generally an arbitrary closed connected subgroup \(\Sigma \leq \Gamma\) and the normal subgroup \(\Delta=\Sigma\cap T\). The author shows that either \(\dim \Sigma/\Delta\leq 2\), so that in particular \(\Sigma\) is solvable, or \(\Sigma/\Delta\) is isomorphic to \(\mathrm{PSL}_2\mathbb{R}\) and acts transitively on the set of parallel classes. In the latter case, \(\Delta\) is obviously the radical of \(\Sigma\), and a Levi complement \(\Lambda\) of \(\Delta\) is locally isomorphic to \(\Sigma/\Delta\cong \mathrm{PSL}_2\mathbb{R}\). In the course of his proof, the author shows that, more precisely, \(\Lambda\) is either isomorphic to \(\mathrm{PSL}_2\mathbb{R}\) or to its universal covering group. It is an open question whether the latter case really occurs. During the proofs, the author distinguishes several cases depending on the dimension of \(\Sigma\) and on assumptions about fixed points and invariant parallel classes of \(\Sigma\). In many of these cases, he obtains further useful insights. For instance, if \(\Sigma\) leaves more than two parallel classes invariant and is 4-dimensional, then \(\Sigma \leq T\), so that the Laguerre plane is ovoidal by a result of \textit{H. Groh} [Math. Z. 122, 117--124 (1971; Zbl 0207.19503)].