Complete flat affine and Lorentzian manifolds (Q1397905)

The authors survey a series of results that have culminated in the study of flat Lorentz manifolds. The line of problems starts from Hilbert's 18th problem of classifying crystallographic groups. A good understanding of Euclidean manifolds, and more generally, compact, complete flat affine manifolds with amenable holonomy has been achieved. Next, starting from Milnor's question (of whether all complete flat affine manifolds have virtually polycyclic fundamental group) and Margulis' negative answer (he constructed a complete flat Lorentz manifold with free fundamental group), the authors give an account on the efforts to classify and understand these interesting counterexamples to Milnor's question, and their generalizations.