Lie Symmetries of the Canonical Connection: Codimension One Abelian Nilradical Case

Abstract

This paper studies the canonical symmetric connection ∇ associated to any Lie group G. The salient properties of ∇ are stated and proved. The Lie symmetries of the geodesic system of a general linear connection are formulated. The results are then applied to ∇ in the special case where the Lie algebra g of G, has a codimension one abelian nilradical. The conditions that determine a Lie symmetry in such a case are completely integrated. Finally the results obtained are compared with some four-dimensional Lie groups whose Lie algebras have three-dimensional abelian nilradicals, for which the calculations were performed by MAPLE.