In 1995, S. Adams and G. Stuck as well as A. Zeghib independently provided a classification of non-compact Lie groups which can act isometrically and locally effectively on compact Lorentzian manifolds. In the case that the corresponding Lie algebra contains a direct summand isomorphic to the two-dimensional special linear algebra or to a twisted Heisenberg algebra, Zeghib also described the geometric structure of the manifolds. Using these results, we investigate the local geometry of compact homogeneous Lorentz spaces whose isometry groups have non-compact connected components. It turns out that they all are reductive. We investigate the isotropy representation and curvatures. In particular, we obtain that any Ricci-flat compact homogeneous Lorentz space is flat or has compact isometry group.
We determine, for all three-dimensional non-unimodular Lie groups equipped with a Lorentzian metric, the set of homogeneous geodesics through a point. Together with the results of [C] and [CM2], this leads to the full classification of three-dimensional Lorentzian g.o. spaces and naturally reductive spaces.
We give a complete description of semi-symmetric algebraic curvature tensors on a four-dimensional Lorentzian vector space and we use this description to determine all four-dimensional homogeneous semi-symmetric Lorentzian manifolds.
The 2-parameter family of certain homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds which includes Minkowski 3-space and anti-de Sitter 3-space is considered. Each homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifold in the 2-parameter family has a solvable Lie group structure with left invariant metric. A generalized integral representation formula which is the unification of representation formulas for maximal spacelike surfaces in those homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds is obtained. The normal Gauß map of maximal spacelike surfaces in those homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds and its harmonicity are discussed.
The main purpose of this paper is to determine the admissible forms of the sectional curvature operator on a three-dimensional locally homogeneous Lorentzian manifolds.
We describe the structure of $d$-dimensional homogeneous Lorentzian $G$-manifolds $M=G/H$ of a semisimple Lie group $G$. Due to a result by N. Kowalsky, it is sufficient to consider the case when the group $G$ acts properly, that is the stabilizer $H$ is compact. Then any homogeneous space $G/\bar H$ with a smaller group $\bar H \subset H$ admits an invariant Lorentzian metric. A homogeneous manifold $G/H$ with a connected compact stabilizer $H$ is called a minimal admissible manifold if it admits an invariant Lorentzian metric, but no homogeneous $G$-manifold $G/\tilde H$ with a larger connec…
We define naturally Hermite-Lorentz metrics on almost-complex manifolds as special case of pseudo-Riemannian metrics compatible with the almost complex structure. We study their isometry groups.
In previous papers, a fundamental affine method for studying homogeneous geodesics was developed. Using this method and elementary differential topology it was proved that any homogeneous affine manifold and in particular any homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifold admits a homogeneous geodesic through arbitrary point. In the present paper this affine method is refined and adapted to the pseudo-Riemannian case. Using this method and elementary topology it is proved that any homogeneous Lorentzian manifold of even dimension admits a light-like homogeneous geodesic. The method is illustrated in d…
Based on the work of Adams and Stuck as well as on the work of Zeghib, we classify the Lie groups which can act isometrically and locally effectively on Lorentzian manifolds of finite volume. In the case that the corresponding Lie algebra contains a direct summand isomorphic to the two-dimensional special linear algebra or to a twisted Heisenberg algebra, we also describe the geometric structure of the manifolds if they are compact. Using these results, we investigate the local geometry of compact homogeneous Lorentz spaces whose isometry groups have non-compact connected components. It turns …
We find a spinorial representation of a Riemannian or Lorentzian surface in a Lorentzian homogeneous space of dimension $3.$ We in particular obtain a representation theorem for surfaces in the $\mathbb{L}(κ,τ)$ spaces. We then recover the Calabi correspondence between minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and maximal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}_1^3$, and obtain a new Lawson type correspondence between CMC surfaces in $\mathbb{R}_1^3$ and in the 3-dimensional pseudo-hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}_1^{3}.$
The 2-parameter family of certain homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds which includes Minkowski 3-space, de Sitter 3-space, and Minkowski motion group is considered. Each homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifold in the 2-parameter family has a solvable Lie group structure with left invariant metric. A generalized integral representation formula which is the unificaton of representation formulas for minimal timelike surfaces in those homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds is obtained. The normal Gauß map of minimal timelike surfaces in those homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds and its harmonicity are discuss…
In this work it is shown that a necessary condition for the completeness of the geodesics of left invariant pseudo-Riemannian metrics on Lie groups is also sufficient in the case of 3-dimensional unimodular Lie groups, and not sufficient for 3-dimensional non unimodular Lie groups. As a consequence it is possible to identify, amongst the compact locally homogeneous Lorentzian 3-manifolds with non compact (local) isotropy group, those that are geodesically complete.
We show that a Lorentzian homogeneous space admitting a homogeneous structure of type T1 + T3 is either a (locally) symmetric space or a singular homogeneous plane wave.
We prove that a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold that is curvature homogeneous of order 3, or $\CH_3$ for short, is necessarily locally homogeneous. We also exhibit and classify four-dimensional Lorentzian, $\CH_2$ manifolds that are not homogeneous.
We classify germs at the origin of real analytic Lorentz metrics on R^3 which are quasihomogeneous, in the sense that they are locally homogeneous on an open set containing the origin in its closure, but not locally homogeneous in the neighborhood of the origin.
k-Curvature homogeneous three-dimensional Walker metrics are described for k=0,1,2. This allows a complete description of locally homogeneous three-dimensional Walker metrics, showing that there exist exactly three isometry classes of such manifolds. As an application one obtains a complete description of all locally homogeneous Lorentzian manifolds with recurrent curvature. Moreover, potential functions are constructed in all the locally homogeneous manifolds resulting in steady gradient Ricci and Cotton solitons.
It is proved that the holomorphic quadratic differential associated to CMC surfaces in Riemannian products $\mathbb{S}^2\times\Rr$ and $\mathbb{H}^2\times \Rr$ discovered by U. Abresch and H. Rosenberg could be obtained as a linear combination of usual Hopf differentials. Using this fact, we are able to extend it for Lorentzian products. Families of examples of helicoidal CMC surfaces on these spaces are explicitly described. We also present some characterizations of CMC rotationally invariant discs and spheres. Finally, after establish some height and area estimates, we prove the existence of…
The paper is devoted to metric connections with parallel skew-symmetric torsion in Lorentzian signature. This is motivated by recent progress in the Riemannian signature and by possible applications to supergravity theories. We provide a complete information about holonomy algebras, torsion and curvature of the considered connections up to the corresponding objects from the Riemannian signature. Various examples are constructed. It is shown how to construct all simply connected Lorentzian naturally reductive homogeneous spaces of arbitrary dimension from Riemannian naturally reductive homogene…
We show a geometric rigidity of isometric actions of non compact (semisimple) Lie groups on Lorentz manifolds. Namely, we show that the manifold has a warped product structure of a Lorentz manifold with constant curvature by a Riemannian manifold.
Let (M,g) be a 3-dimensional compact connected real analytic Lorentz manifold and suppose that g is locally homogeneous on a non-empty open set in M (the pseudogroup of local isometries of g has an open orbit). Then we prove that g is locally homogeneous on M (the pseudogroup of local isometries is transitive on M).
We describe three-dimensional Lorentzian homogeneous Ricci solitons, showing that all types (i.e. shrinking, expanding and steady) exist. Moreover, all non-trivial examples have non-diagonalizable Ricci operator with one only eigenvalue.
We study a family of 3-dimensional Lorentz manifolds. Some members of the family are 0-curvature homogeneous, 1-affine curvature homogeneous, but not 1-curvature homogeneous. Some are 1-curvature homogeneous but not 2-curvature homogeneous. All are 0-modeled on indecomposible local symmetric spaces. Some of the members of the family are geodesically complete, others are not. All have vanishing scalar invariants.
We give a classification, up to local isomorphisms, of semi-simple Lie groups without compact factors that can act faithfully and conformally on a compact Lorentz manifold of dimension greater than or equal to $3$.
We describe the compact Lorentzian $3$-manifolds admitting a parallel lightlike vector field. The classification of compact Lorentzian $3$-manifolds admitting non-isometric affine diffeomorphisms follows, together with the complete description of these morphisms. Such a Lorentzian manifold is in some sense an equivariant deformation of a flat one.
We consider (compact or noncompact) Lorentzian manifolds whose holonomy group has compact closure. Among other results, we obtain that this property is equivalent to admitting a parallel timelike vector field. We also derive some properties of the space of all such metrics on a given manifold.
We prove that the conformal group of a closed, simply connected, real analytic Lorentzian manifold is compact. D'Ambra proved in 1988 that the isometry group of such a manifold is compact. Our result implies the Lorentzian Lichnerowicz Conjecture for real analytic Lorentzian manifolds with finite fundamental group. Third version includes corrections and clarifications, particularly in section 6.
Some results related to the causality of compact Lorentzian manifolds are proven: (1) any compact Lorentzian manifold which admits a timelike conformal vector field is totally vicious, and (2) a compact Lorentzian manifold covered regularly by a globally hyperbolic spacetime admits a timelike closed geodesic, if some natural topological assumptions (fulfilled, for example, if one of the conjugacy classes of deck transformations containing a closed timelike curve is finite) hold. As a consequence, any compact Lorentzian manifold conformal to a static spacetime is geodesically connected by causa…
In the present paper, we prove that no infinite group acts isometrically, effectively, and properly discontinuously on a certain class of Lorentzian manifolds that are not necessarily homogeneous.
Let H be a closed, noncompact subgroup of a simple Lie group G, such that G/H admits an invariant Lorentz metric. We show that if G = SO(2,n), with n > 2, then the identity component of H is conjugate to the identity component of SO(1,n). Also, if G = SO(1,n), with n > 2, then the identity component of H is conjugate to the identity component of SO(1,n-1).
We prove a structure theorem for compact aspherical Lorentz manifolds with abundant local symmetry. If M is a compact, aspherical, real-analytic, complete Lorentz manifold such that the isometry group of the universal cover has semisimple identity component, then the local isometry orbits in M are roughly fibers of a fiber bundle. A corollary is that if M has a dense local isometry orbit then M is locally homogeneous. The main result is analogous to a theorem of Farb and Weinberger on compact aspherical Riemannian manifolds, and an exposition of their arguments on rational cohomological dimens…
We prove that any metric of non-positive curvature in the sense of Alexandrov on a compact surface can be isometrically embedded as a convex spacelike Cauchy surface in a flat spacetime of dimension (2+1). The proof follows from polyhedral approximation.
The main result of this paper is the conformal flatness of real-analytic compact Lorentz manifolds of dimension at least $3$ admitting a conformal essential (i.e. conformal, but not isometric) action of a Lie group locally isomorphic to PSL(2,R). It is established by using a general result of M. Gromov on local isometries of real-analytic $A$-rigid geometric structures. As corollary, we deduce the same conclusion for conformal essential actions of connected semi-simple Lie groups on real-analytic compact Lorentz manifolds. This work is a contribution to the understanding of the Lorentzian vers…
Left-invariant Cotton solitons on homogeneous manifolds are determined. Moreover, algebraic Cotton solitons are studied providing examples of non-invariant Cotton solitons, both in the Riemannian and Lorentzian homogeneous settings.
The main result of this paper is a construction of fundamental domains for certain group actions on Lorentz manifolds of constant curvature. We consider the simply connected Lie group G~, the universal cover of the group SU(1,1) of orientation-preserving isometries of the hyperbolic plane. The Killing form on the Lie group G~ gives rise to a bi-invariant Lorentz metric of constant curvature. We consider a discrete subgroup Gamma_1 and a cyclic discrete subgroup Gamma_2 in G~ which satisfy certain conditions. We describe the Lorentz space form Gamma_1\G~/Gamma_2 by constructing a fundamental do…
We study the geometry and the periodic geodesics of a compact Lorentzian manifold that has a Killing vector field which is timelike somewhere. Using a compactness argument for subgroups of the isometry group, we prove the existence of one timelike non self-intersecting periodic geodesic. If the Killing vector field is never vanishing, then there are at least two distinct periodic geodesics; as a special case, compact stationary manifolds have at least two periodic timelike geodesics. We also discuss some properties of the topology of such manifolds. In particular, we show that a compact manifo…
In this work we investigate families of compact Lorentzian manifolds in dimension four. We show that every lightlike geodesic on such spaces is periodic, while there are closed and non-closed spacelike and timelike geodesics. Their isometry groups are computed. We also show that there is a non trivial action by isometries of $\Heis_3(\RR)$ on the nilmanifold $S^1\times (Γ_k \bsh \Heis_3(\RR))$ for $Γ_k$ a lattice of $\Heis_3(\RR)$.
We consider Lie groups equipped with a left-invariant cyclic Lorentzian metric. As in the Riemannian case, in terms of homogeneous structures, such metrics can be considered as different as possible from bi-invariant metrics. We show that several results concerning cyclic Riemannian metrics do not extend to their Lorentzian analogues, and obtain a full classification of three- and four-dimensional cyclic Lorentzian metrics.
We prove results toward classifying compact Lorentz manifolds on which Heisenberg groups act isometrically. We give a general construction, leading to a new example, of codimension-one actions--those for which the dimension of the Heisenberg group is one less than the dimension of the manifold. The main result is a classification of codimension-one actions, under the assumption they are real-analytic.
We prove that a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold that is curvature homogeneous of order 3, or CH_3 for short, is necessarily locally homogeneous. We also exhibit and classify four-dimensional Lorentzian, CH_2 manifolds that are not homogeneous. The resulting metrics belong to the class of null electromagnetic radiation, type N solutions on an anti-de Sitter background. These findings prove that the four-dimensional Lorentzian Singer number $k_{1,3}=3$, falsifying some recent conjectures by Gilkey. We also prove that invariant classification for these proper CH_2 solutions requires $\nabla^…
We address the problem of finding conditions under which a compact Lorentzian manifold is geodesically complete, a property, which always holds for compact Riemannian manifolds. It is known that a compact Lorentzian manifold is geodesically complete if it is homogeneous, or has constant curvature, or admits a time-like conformal vector field. We consider certain Lorentzian manifolds with Abelian holonomy, which are locally modelled by the so called pp-waves, and which, in general, do not satisfy any of the above conditions. %the condition that their curvature sends vectors that are orthogonal …
We consider a hyperbolic Dirac-type operator with growing potential on a a spatially non-compact globally hyperbolic manifold. We show that the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer boundary value problem for such operator is Fredholm and obtain a formula for this index in terms of the local integrals and the relative eta-invariant introduced by Braverman and Shi. This extends recent results of Bär and Strohmaier, who studied the index of a hyperbolic Dirac operator on a spatially compact globally hyperbolic manifold.
We show that a germ of a real analytic Lorentz metric on ${\bf R}^3$ which is locally homogeneous on an open set containing the origin in its closure is necessarily locally homogeneous. We classifiy Lie algebras that can act quasihomogeneously---meaning they act transitively on an open set admitting the origin in its closure, but not at the origin---and isometrically for such a metric. In the case that the isotropy at the origin of a quasihomogeneous action is semisimple, we provide a complete set of normal forms of the metric and the action.
We show that the Dirac operator on a compact globally hyperbolic Lorentzian spacetime with spacelike Cauchy boundary is a Fredholm operator if appropriate boundary conditions are imposed. We prove that the index of this operator is given by the same expression as in the index formula of Atiyah-Patodi-Singer for Riemannian manifolds with boundary. The index is also shown to equal that of a certain operator constructed from the evolution operator and a spectral projection on the boundary. In case the metric is of product type near the boundary a Feynman parametrix is constructed.
By means of a family of counter-examples, it is shown that the Reilly upper bound for the first eigenvalue of the Laplace operator for a compact submanifold in Euclidean space does not work for $n$-dimensional compact spacelike submanifolds of Lorentz-Minkowski spacetime $\mathbb{L}^m$, $m\geq n+2$. We develop a new suitable technique, based on an integral formula on compact spacelike sections of the light cone in $\mathbb{L}^m$. Then, a family of extrinsic upper bounds for the first eigenvalue of the Laplace operator for a compact spacelike submanifold in $\mathbb{L}^m$ is proved. For each on…
A parallel lightlike vector field on a Lorentzian manifold $X$ naturally defines a foliation $\mathcal{F}$ of codimension one. If either all leaves of $\mathcal{F}$ are compact or $X$ itself is compact admitting a compact leaf and the (transverse) Ricci curvature is non-negative then a Bochner type argument implies that the first Betti number of $X$ is bounded by $1 \leq b_{1} \leq \dim X$ if $X$ is compact and $0 \leq b_{1} \leq \dim X -1$ otherwise. We show that these bounds are optimal and depending on the holonomy of $X$ we obtain further results. Finally, we classify the holonomy represen…
The notion of $Γ$-symmetric space is a natural generalization of the classical notion of symmetric space based on $\z_2$-grading of Lie algebras. In our case, we consider homogeneous spaces $G/H$ such that the Lie algebra $\g$ of $G$ admits a $Γ$-grading where $Γ$ is a finite abelian group. In this work we study Riemannian metrics and Lorentzian metrics on the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}_3$ adapted to the symmetries of a $Γ$-symmetric structure on $\mathbb{H}_3$. We prove that the classification of $\z_2^2$-symmetric Riemannian and Lorentzian metrics on $\mathbb{H}_3$ corresponds to the class…
We study pseudo-Riemanniasn manifolds $(M,g)$ with transitive group of conformal transformation which is essential, i.e. does not preserves any metric conformal to $g$. All such manifolds of Lorentz signature with non exact isotropy representation of the stability subalgebra are described. A construction of essential conformally homogeneous manifolds with exact isotropy represenatation is given. Using spinor formalism, we prove that it provides all 4-dimensional non conformally flat Lorentzian 4-dimensional manifolds with transitive essentially conformal group.
Locally homogeneous Lorentzian three-manifolds with recurrect curvature are special examples of Walker manifolds, that is, they admit a parallel null vector field. We obtain a full classification of the symmetries of these spaces, with particular regard to symmetries related to their curvature: Ricci and matter collineations, curvature and Weyl collineations. Several results are given for the broader class of three-dimensional Walker manifolds.
We consider Lorentzian manifolds with parallel light-like vector field V. Being parallel and light-like, the orthogonal complement of V induces a codimension one foliation. Assuming compactness of the leaves and non-negative Ricci curvature on the leaves it is known that the first Betti number is bounded by the dimension of the manifold or the leaves if the manifold is compact or non-compact, respectively. We prove in the case of the maximality of the first Betti number that every such Lorentzian manifold is - up to finite cover - diffeomorphic to the torus (in the compact case) or the product…
