Nonunimodular Lorentzian flat Lie algebras

Abstract

A Lorentzian flat Lie group is a Lie group $G$ with a flat left invariant metric $\mu$ with signature $(1,n-1)=(-,+,\ldots,+)$. The Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}=T_eG$ of $G$ endowed with $\langle\;,\;\rangle=\mu(e)$ is called flat Lorentzian Lie algebra. It is known that the metric of a flat Lorentzian Lie group is geodesically complete if and only if its Lie algebra is unimodular. In this paper, we characterise nonunimodular Lorentzian flat Lie algebras as double extensions (in the sense of Aubert-Medina \cite{Aub-Med}) of Riemannian flat Lie algebras. As application of this result, we give all nonunimodular Lorentzian flat Lie algebras up to dimension 4.