Affine structures on abelian Lie groups (Q1863533)

This paper relates affine structures on abelian Lie groups with associative commutative algebras. This construction stems from the classical observation that the left-invariant vector fields on a Lie group \(G\) with a left-invariant affine connection are closed with respect to covariant differentiation. When \(G\) is abelian and the connection is flat and torsionfree, then this algebra is commutative and associative. Conversely every commutative and associative algebra determines an invariant affine structure on the vector group underlying the algebra. The present paper relates geometric properties of the affine structure to algebraic properties of the commutative associative algebra. It is shown that if the second cohomology of a 3-dimensional commutative associative algebra vanishes, then the affine structure is rigid. As another example, it is shown that the condition that the algebra possesses a unit (this is the condition sometimes called \textit{radiant}) is an open condition in the moduli space of affine structures. The affine structures on \(\mathbb R^2\) and \(\mathbb R^3\) are described in detail. The 15 classes of affine structures on \(\mathbb R^3\) are listed, and the rigid and complete ones are identified. The reviewer did not understand Proposition~4.4, which states that only the two complete structures on \(\mathbb R^2\) induce affine structures on the torus. Similarly the reviewer did not understand the discussion in 5.4 concerning how incompatibility with lattices in \(\mathbb R^3\) precludes certain affine structures on the Lie algebra from defining invariant (but incomplete) affine structures on the 3-torus.