The virtual solvability of the fundamental group of a compact complete flat spacetime of type \((n-2,2)\) (Q675082)

The authors consider affine crystallographic groups \(\Gamma\), discrete subgroups of \(Aff(n)\), the \(n\)-dimensional real affine group, acting properly discontinuously and uniformly on \(\mathbb{R}^n\). Auslander conjectured that every affine crystallographic group is virtually solvable. A number of cases are known for which this conjecture is true, in particular for the Euclidean space groups and for the crystallographic subgroups of the \(n\)-dimensional Poincaré group \(E(n-1,1)\). The aim of the paper is to extend the validity of Auslander's conjecture to the crystallographic subgroups of \(E(n-2,2)\). For this, however, an additional property is needed for the unipotent radical of the algebraic hull of \(\Gamma\) in \(Aff(n)\). This condition already holds in the spacetime case \(E(3,1)\). While for a space group \(G\) the translations \(G\cap \mathbb{R}^n= \Lambda\) form a lattice group, the situation is more complex in the present case and one has to distinguish between \(\Gamma\) having trivial and nontrivial translations, corresponding to \(\Gamma\cap \mathbb{R}^n= \{0\}\) and \(\Gamma\cap \mathbb{R}^n \neq \{0\}\), respectively. Finally, a problem is suggested for an alternative condition requiring for the point group of \(\Gamma\) to be Zariski dense in \(SO(n-2,2)\).