The structure of locally conformally product Lie algebras

Abstract

A locally conformally product (LCP) structure on a compact conformal manifold is a closed non-exact Weyl connection (i.e.~a linear connection which is locally but not globally the Levi-Civita connection of Riemannian metrics in the conformal class), with reducible holonomy. A left-invariant LCP structure on a compact quotient $\Gamma \backslash G$ of a simply connected Riemannian Lie group $(G,g)$ with Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ can be characterized in terms of a closed 1-form $\theta \in {\mathfrak{g}}^{\ast }$ and a non-zero subspace $\mathfrak{u}\subset \mathfrak{g}$ satisfying some algebraic conditions. We show that these conditions are equivalent to the fact that $\mathfrak{g}$ is isomorphic to a semidirect product of a non-unimodular Lie algebra acting on an abelian one by a conformal representation. This extends to the general case previous results holding for solvmanifolds. In addition, we construct explicit examples of compact LCP manifolds which are not solvmanifolds.

23 pages