English

Homogeneous geodesics in pseudo-Riemannian nilmanifolds

Differential Geometry 2014-09-25 v3

Abstract

We study the geodesic orbit property for nilpotent Lie groups NN when endowed with a pseudo-Riemannian left-invariant metric. We consider this property with respect to different groups acting by isometries. When NN acts on itself by left-translations we show that it is a geodesic orbit space if and only if the metric is bi-invariant. Assuming NN is 2-step nilpotent and with non-degenerate center we give algebraic conditions on the Lie algebra n\mathfrak n of NN in order to verify that every geodesic is the orbit of a one-parameter subgroup of NAuto(N)N\rtimes\operatorname{Auto}(N). In addition we present an example of an almost g.o. space such that for null homogeneous geodesics, the natural parameter of the orbit is not always the affine parameter of the geodesic.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.5939,
  title  = {Homogeneous geodesics in pseudo-Riemannian nilmanifolds},
  author = {Viviana del Barco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.5939},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

v2: Theorem 3.1. is added, corrected style