Counting Crystallographic Groups in Low Dimensions (Q4526083)

A crystallographic group \(G\) of dimension \(n\) is a group fitting into a short exact sequence \(0\to V\to G\to P\to 1\) where \(P\) (the point-group) is a finite group acting faithfully on a free Abelian subgroup \(V\) of \(G\) of rank \(n\). Torsion-free crystallographic groups, i.e. the Bieberbach groups, are exactly the fundamental groups of the compact flat Riemannian manifolds. The third Bieberbach theorem answered Hilbert's 18-th problem by showing that there are, up to isomorphism, only finitely many crystallographic groups of a given dimension. This result motivated the classification of the isomorphism types of crystallographic groups. In [\textit{H. Brown, R. Bülow, J. Neubüser, H. Wondratschek, H. Zassenhaus}, Crystallographic groups of four-dimensional space (1978; Zbl 0381.20002)], the two-, three- and (for the first time) four-dimensional crystallographic groups were described. There are respectively 17, 219 and 4783 isomorphism types of crystallographic groups in dimensions 2, 3 and 4. In this paper, this classification of crystallographic groups in low dimensions is continued for dimensions 5 and 6, although adapted to the observation that the number of crystallographic groups grows rapidly when the dimension increases (in dimension 5, 222018 isomorphism types of crystallographic groups are found and in dimension 6, there are already 28927922 types). The corresponding computations were done using computer programs and data which are part of CARAT, a software package available at \url{http://www-math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/carat/}.