Infra-nilmanifolds modeled on the group of uni-triangular matrices

Abstract

Let \({\mathcal {N}}_m\) be the group of \(m\times m\) upper triangular real matrices with all the diagonal entries 1. Then it is an \((m-1)\)-step nilpotent Lie group, diffeomorphic to \({\mathbb {R}}^{\frac{1}{2} m(m-1)}\). It contains all the integer matrices as a lattice \(\Gamma _m\). The automorphism group of \({\mathcal {N}}_m \ (m\ge 4)\) turns out to be extremely small. In fact, \(\mathrm {Aut}({\mathcal {N}})=\mathcal {I} \rtimes \mathrm {Out}({\mathcal {N}})\), where \(\mathcal {I}\) is a connected, simply connected nilpotent Lie group, and \(\mathrm {Out}({\mathcal {N}})={{\tilde{K}}}={(\mathbb {R}^*)^{m-1}\rtimes \mathbb {Z}_2}\). With a nice left-invariant Riemannian metric on \({\mathcal {N}}\), the isometry group is \(\mathrm {Isom}({\mathcal {N}})= {\mathcal {N}} \rtimes K\), where \(K={(\mathbb {Z}_2)^{m-1}\rtimes \mathbb {Z}_2}\subset {{\tilde{K}}}\) is a maximal compact subgroup of \(\mathrm {Aut}({\mathcal {N}})\). We prove that, for odd \(m\ge 4\), there is no infra-nilmanifold which is essentially covered by the nilmanifold \(\Gamma _m\backslash {\mathcal {N}}_m\). For \(m=2n\ge 4\) (even), there is a unique infra-nilmanifold which is essentially (and doubly) covered by the nilmanifold \(\Gamma _m\backslash {\mathcal {N}}_m\).