Simply transitive NIL-affine actions of solvable Lie groups

Abstract

Every simply connected and connected solvable Lie group $G$ admits a simply transitive action on a nilpotent Lie group $H$ via affine transformations. Although the existence is guaranteed, not much is known about which Lie groups $G$ can act simply transitive on which Lie groups $H$. So far the focus was mainly on the case where $G$ is also nilpotent, leading to a characterization depending only on the corresponding Lie algebras and related to the notion of post-Lie algebra structures. This paper studies two different aspects of this problem. First, we give a method to check whether a given action $\rho: G \to \operatorname{Aff}(H)$ is simply transitive by looking only at the induced morphism $\varphi: \mathfrak{g} \to \operatorname{aff}(\mathfrak{h})$ between the corresponding Lie algebras. Secondly, we show how to check whether a given solvable Lie group $G$ acts simply transitive on a given nilpotent Lie group $H$, again by studying properties of the corresponding Lie algebras. The main tool for both methods is the semisimple splitting of a solvable Lie algebra and its relation to the algebraic hull, which we also define on the level of Lie algebras. As an application, we give a full description of the possibilities for simply transitive actions up to dimension $4$.