Affine reductive spaces of small dimension and left \(A\)-loops (Q860129)

The contribution of the present paper is towards a classification of almost differentiable left \(A\)-loops \(L\). These are binary systems \((L,\cdot )\) with identity element and such that the equations \(a\cdot y=b\) and \(x\cdot a=b\) have unique solutions, in which any mapping \(x\mapsto (ab)^{-1}(a(bx))\), \(a, b\in L\) is an automorphism of \(L\). It is known that groups topologically generated by the left translations of almost differentiable left \(A\)-loops are Lie groups, so \(L\) can be treated as images of global sections \(\sigma : G/H\to G\), where \(G\) is a connected Lie group and \(H\) a closed subgroup containing no non-trivial normal subgroup of \(G\) such that the subset \(\sigma (G/H)\) is invariant under the conjugation with the elements of \(H\). Since the tangent space \(T_1(\sigma (G/H))\) is a reductive subspace complementary to the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak h\) of \(H\), the affine reductive spaces are important for the classification of almost differentiable left \(A\)-loops. One of the main results of the paper is to determine affine reductive spaces \(G/H\) such that there exists an \(Ad(H)\)-invariant subspace \(\mathfrak m\) of the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak g\) of \(G\) complementary to \(\mathfrak h\). This is something standard in differential geometry of homogeneous spaces, however only when \(G\) is a compact and connected Lie group. If \(G\) is non-compact the situation is far more complicated. The author determines all at least \(4\)-dimensional affine reductive homogeneous spaces \((\mathfrak g, \mathfrak h, \mathfrak m)\) such that \(\mathfrak g\) is either an at most \(9\)-dimensional simple Lie algebra or isomorphic to \(\mathfrak s\mathfrak l_2(\mathbb R)\oplus\mathfrak g_2\), where \(\mathfrak g_2\) is a \(3\)-dimensional simple Lie algebra. Using this, all global almost differentiable left \(A\)-loops \(L\) are classified having either a \(6\)-dimensional semi-simple Lie group, or the group \(SL_3(\mathbb R)\) as the group topologically generated by their left translations.