Contractible Lie groups over local fields (Q957908)

A contraction group is a pair \((G,\alpha )\) of a topological group \(G\) and a bicontinuous automorphism \(\alpha :\;G\to G\), such that \(\alpha^n (x)\to 1\), as \(n\to \infty\), for each \(x\in G\). The author studies contraction Lie groups over a complete ultrametric field \(K\). It is shown that for \(\text{char}K=0\) the contraction property is equivalent to a corresponding property of the Lie algebra. For \(\text{char}K>0\), the correspondence between Lie algebras and Lie groups is more complicated. For example, two non-isomorphic contraction groups can give rise to the same Lie algebra and the same contractive Lie algebra automorphism. For local fields of positive characteristic, it is also shown that a contraction \(C^1\)-Lie group is a torsion group of finite exponent and solvable. A \(C^k\)-Lie group with \(k\geq 2\) is nilpotent. The latter result is valid if \(K\) is an arbitrary complete ultrametric field.