Construction of nice nilpotent Lie groups (Q1730200)

Nice nilpotent Lie algebras have been introduced by \textit{J. Lauret} and \textit{C. Will} [Math. Ann. 350, No. 1, 199--225 (2011; Zbl 1222.53048)] as a tool to construct Einstein Riemannian manifolds, and have found applications among others in the context of the Ricci flow [\textit{J. Lauret} and \textit{C. Will}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 141, No. 10, 3651--3663 (2013; Zbl 1279.53065)]. A basis \((e_{i})\) of a real Lie algebra \(L\) is said to be nice if for all \(i, j\) (1) there is \(k\) such that the Lie bracket \([e_{i}, e_{j}]\) is a multiple of \(k\); (2) there is at most one \(h\) such that \([e_{i}, e_{h}]\) is a non-zero multiple of \(e_{j}\). A pair consisting of a real nilpotent Lie algebra together with a nice basis of it is called a nice nilpotent Lie algebra. In the paper under review, the authors describe an algorithm for classifying nice nilpotent Lie algebras. The idea is to associate to such an object a directed, acyclic graph with no multiple arrows, whose vertices are the elements of the nice basis \((e_{i})\), and where there is an edge from \(e_{i}\) to \(e_{k}\) if there is \(j\) such that \(e_{k}\) is a non-zero multiple of \([e_{i}, e_{j}]\); such an edge is labelled \(j\). The authors define a directed graph to be nice it is satisfies certain properties which hold in the graph associated to nice nilpotent Lie algebra. (For instance if there is an edge, labelled \(j\), from \(e_{i}\) to \(e_{k}\), then there is also an edge, labelled \(i\), from \(j\) to \(k\).) Although it is shown that these properties fall short of a characterisation of such graphs, the authors are able to provide two algorithms: the first yields a classification of nice graphs, the second determines the nice Lie algebras, if any, associated to a given nice graph. With these algorithms the authors are able to determine among others the number of inequivalent nice bases on nilpotent Lie algebras of dimension at most \(7\).