Flat pseudo-Riemannian manifolds with a nilpotent transitive group of isometries (Q1205530)

This paper is concerned with the attempt to classify all flat homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. The classification for all such manifolds which are complete was done by \textit{J. A. Wolf} [Spaces of constant curvature, McGraw-Hill (New York 1967; Zbl 0162.533)]. Since all homogeneous Riemannian manifolds are complete, the classification in the Riemannian case is finished. The authors of this paper have previously classified all flat homogeneous spacetimes [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 107, No. 3, 785-795 (1989; Zbl 0683.53055)]. In this paper, they give several interesting results in the case of an arbitrary pseudo-Riemannian signature. They prove that any flat pseudo-Riemannian manifold which has a nilpotent transitive group of isometries is complete (and thus Wolf's classification applies). A pseudo-Riemannian manifold \(M\) is defined to be translationally isotropic if the set of pure translations which leave the associated homogeneous domain of \(M\) invariant contains its perpendicular space. All simply connected translationally isotropic flat homogeneous manifolds of signature \((2, n - 2)\) are classified. Several examples of flat homogeneous manifolds of arbitrary pseudo-Riemannian signature are given. It is interesting to note that these examples are all translationally isotropic and the authors know of no examples which are not translationally isotropic. As an additional result, they prove that a flat pseudo-Riemannian homogeneous manifold with non-trivial holonomy must contain a complete geodesic.