Lorentzian similarity manifolds (Q1935628)

This paper studies Lorentzian similarity manifolds, which are affine flat manifolds endowed with a Lorentzian metric and such that their affine transformations belong to the homothety group of the Lorentz metric (i.e. the Poincaré group together with dilations). By a result of Aristide, compact complete Lorentzian similarity manifolds are Lorentzian flat space forms. One of the results proved in this paper is that compact Lorentzian flat space forms have a fundamental group admitting a non-trivial translation subgroup. It is also proved that, in dimension four, for every compact complete Lorentzian flat manifold there is a finite cover admitting a causal circle action, i.e. an \(S^1\) action with tangent vector field being either time-like, or space-like or light-like everywhere. Furthermore, the corresponding circle bundle structure of the finite cover is classified depending on the causal character of the action. Finally the paper considers Fefferman-Lorentz manifolds, which are the product of \(S^1\) and a strictly pseudo-convex odd-dimensional CR-manifold endowed with a Lorentzian metric with the property that \(S^1\) acts by light-like isometries and the conformal class of this metric is a CR-invariant. By previous results of the author, these manifolds admit a so-called Fefferman-Lorentz parabolic structure. By using developing maps and holonomy representations, covering properties of these manifolds are proved.