Reductive homogeneous Lorentzian manifolds

Abstract

We study homogeneous Lorentzian manifolds $M = G/L$ of a connected reductive Lie group $G$ modulo a connected reductive subgroup $L$, under the assumption that $M$ is (almost) $G$-effective and the isotropy representation is totally reducible. We show that the description of such manifolds reduces to the case of semisimple Lie groups $G$. Moreover, we prove that such a homogeneous space is reductive. We describe all totally reducible subgroups of the Lorentz group and divide them into three types. The subgroups of Type I are compact, while the subgroups of Type II and Type III are non-compact. The explicit description of the corresponding homogeneous Lorentzian spaces of Type II and III (under some mild assumption) is given. We also show that the description of Lorentz homogeneous manifolds $M = G/L$ of Type I, reduces to the description of subgroups $L$ such that $M=G/L$ is an admissible manifold, i.e., an effective homogeneous manifold that admits an invariant Lorentzian metric. Whenever the subgroup $L$ is a maximal subgroup with these properties, we call such a manifold minimal admissible. We classify all minimal admissible homogeneous manifolds $G/L$ of a compact semisimple Lie group $G$ and describe all invariant Lorentzian metrics on them.