On the properly discontinuous subgroups of affine motions (Q1387107)

The author considers an affine crystallographic group \(\Gamma\), which is a discrete subgroup of \(Aff(n)\), the \(n\)-dimensional real affine group, acting properly discontinuously and uniformly on \(\mathbb{R}^n\). L. S. Auslander conjectured that every affine crystallographic group is virtually solvable, i.e. it has a solvable subgroup of finite index. This conjecture had been proved in a number of cases, in particular when the linear part \(\lambda(\Gamma)\) of \(\Gamma\) is contained in \(O(n)\), \(O(n- 1,1)\) and \(O(n-2,2)\). The paper gives an algebraic condition ensuring the validity of Auslander's conjecture for \(\Gamma\). The proof is based on the Levi semidirect product decomposition \(G^0= S.R\), where \(G^0\) is the identity component of \(G\), the Zariski closure of \(\lambda(\Gamma)\), \(S\) a maximal semisimple subgroup of \(G^0\) and \(R\) the solvable radical of \(G^0\). The algebraic condition is then expressed in terms of irreducible representations of \(S\), restriction of the irreducible representations of a maximal reductive subgroup \(P\) of \(G^0\) which contains \(S\).