Homogeneous geodesics and natural reductivity of homogeneous Gödel-type spacetimes (Q2219918)

Let \((M,g)\) be a homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifold and \(G\subset I_0(M,g)\) a connected Lie group of isometries acting transitively on \(M\), so that \((M,g)\) is identified with the pseudo-Riemannian homogeneous space \((G/H,g)\), where \(H\) is the isotropy group at some point \(P_0\in M=G/H\). A geodesic \(\gamma\) through \(P_0\) is called homogeneous if it is the orbit of a one-parameter subgroup. A geodesic orbit space (g.o. space) is a coset representation \((M=G/H,g)\) of a homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifold, all of whose geodesics are homogeneous. In the recent years there is extensive interest in the study of g.o. space with several interesting results, both in Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian case. The latter case is a bit more delicate, due to the fact that, while any homogeneous Riemannian manifold is reductive, there exist homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (of dimension at least four), which do not admit any reductive decomposition. In the present paper the authors study the homogeneous geodesics and the natural reductivity condition for the well-known class of homogeneous spacetimes of Gödel-type. These spaces were considered by \textit{K. Gödel} [Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 447--450 (1949; Zbl 0041.56701)]. They are Lorentzian spaces with metric \(g=(dt+H(r)d\phi)^2-dr^2-D^2(r)d\phi^2-dz^2\), satisfying the conditions \(H'=-2\omega D\), \(D''=\alpha D\), for some real constants \(\alpha, \omega\). The authors apply the affine method (used by Z. Dušek, O. Kowalski and Z. Vlášek) to determine their homogeneous geodesics through a point. All these spaces turn out to be g.o., so they use their explicit metrics to prove that they admit some special homogeneous Lorentzian structures, which ensure that those spaces are naturally reductive.