Cyclic metric Lie groups (Q2255261)

The article treats the notion of cyclic Lie groups. A connected Lie group \(G\) with a left-invariant metric \(g\) is called cyclic if the homogeneous structure \(S_X Y =\nabla_X Y\) is of type \(\mathcal T_1 \oplus \mathcal T_2\) in terms of the Tricerri-Vanhecke classification. This is equivalent to saying that \(\mathfrak S_{X,Y,Z}\langle [X, Y], Z\rangle = 0\) for any \(X, Y, Z \in\mathfrak g= T_eG\), where \(\langle\;,\;\rangle\) denotes the inner product on \(\mathfrak{g}\) corresponding to \(g\). Non-abelian cyclic Lie groups are far from Lie groups equipped with a bi-invariant metric, where \(S\) is of type \(\mathcal T_3\). The authors prove that a connected metric cyclic Lie group is flat if and only if it is abelian. In the semisimple case they show that a metric cyclic Lie group must be non-compact, in particular there is no cyclic metric Lie group with strictly positive sectional curvature. They also examine the solvable case, proving that any connected and simply-connected solvable cyclic Lie group is the orthogonal semidirect product \(\mathbb R \ltimes_\pi N\), where \(N\) is a codimension-one unimodular normal Lie subgroup and \(\pi\) is a self-adjoint derivation on the Lie algebra of \(N\). For nilpotent Lie groups they show that they are never cyclic, unless they are abelian. Finally, the authors present the classification of all connected and simply-connected cyclic metric Lie groups in any dimension less than or equal to five. In particular, non-unimodular Lie groups are also examined and they extend the Kowalski-Tricerri's and Bieszk's classification of connected and simply connected unimodular cyclic metric Lie groups in dimensions \(n\leq 5\), to the general case, by adding the corresponding non-unimodular cases.