Physics Commons^™

Spacetime Groups, Ian M. Anderson, Charles G. Torre

All Physics Faculty Publications

A spacetime group is a connected 4-dimensional Lie group G endowed with a left invariant Lorentz metric h and such that the connected component of the isometry group of h is G itself. The Newman-Penrose formalism is used to give an algebraic classification of spacetime groups, that is, we determine a complete list of inequivalent spacetime Lie algebras, which are pairs, (g, n), with g being a 4-dimensional Lie algebra and n being a Lorentzian inner product on g. A full analysis of the equivalence problem for spacetime Lie algebras is given which leads to a completely …