Introduction. Polyhedra in 3-dimensional hyperbolic space which give rise to discrete groups generated by reflections in their faces have been investigated in [14], [17], [29] and in the case of tetrahedra there are precisely nine compact non-congruent ones with dihedral angles integral submultiples of π [14]. These polyhedral groups give rise to hyperbolic 3-orbifolds and examples of these have been studied, for example, in [3], [15], [18], [24], [25].

Recently M. Benedicks showed that if a function f ∈ L2(Rd) and its Fourier transform both have supports of finite measure, then f = 0 almot everywhere. In this paper we give a version of this result for all noncompact semisimple connected Lie groups with finite centres.

Let N be a nilpotent simply connected Lie group, and A a commutative connected d-dimensional Lie group of automorphisms of N which correspond to semisimple endomorphisms of the Lie algebra of N with positive eigenvalues. Form the split extension S = N × A ≅ N × a, a being the Lie algebra of A. We consider a family of “rectangles” Br in S, parameterized by r > 0, such that the measure of Br behaves asymptotically as a fixed power of r. One can construct the Hardy-Littlewood maximal function operator f → Mf relative to left translates of the family {Br}. We prove that M is of weak type (1, 1). This complements a result of J.-O. Strömberg concerning maximal functions defined relative to hyperbolic balls in a symmetric space.

According to an extension of a classical theorem of Bernstein, due to C. Herz, a function on Rn belonging to a Besov space of appropriate order has an absolutely convergent Fourier transform. We establish extensions of this result to Cartan motion groups, for Besov spaces defined with respect to both isotropic and non-isotropic differences.

In this paper it is proved that the principal series of representations of Γ = Z2*…*Z2 may be analytically continued to give uniformly bounded representations on the same Hilbert space, and that these representations are irreducible. Further, the reducibility of the restrictions to Γ ⊂ SL(2, Qp) of the irreducible unitary representations of SL(2, Qp) is examined.

The paper deals with six groups: the unitary, orthogonal, symplectic, Fredholm unitary, special Fredholm orthogonal, and Fredholm symplectic groups of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. When each is furnished with the invariant Finsler structure induced by the operator-norm on the Lie algebra, it is shown that, between any two points of the group, there exists a geodesic realising this distance (often, indeed, a unique geodesic), except in the full orthogonal group, in which there are pairs of points that cannot be joined by minimising geodesics, and also pairs that cannot even be joined by minimising paths. A full description is given of each of these possibilities.

Let G be an exponential Lie group. We study primitive ideals (i.e. kernels of irreducible *-representations of L1(G)), with bounded approximate units (b.a.u.). We prove a result relating the existence of b.a.u. in certain primitive ideals with the geometry of the corresponding Kirillov orbits. This yields for a solvable group of class 2, a characterization of the primitive ideals with b.a.u.

This paper calculates the central Borel 2 cocycles for certain 2-step nilpotent Lie groups G with values in the injectives A of the category of 2nd countable locally compact abelian groups. The G's include, among others, all groups locally isomorphic to a Heisenberg group. The A's are direct sums of vector groups and (possibly infinite dimensional) tori, and in particular include R, T, and Cx. The main results are as follows.

(4.1) Every symmetric central 2 cocycle is trivial.

(4.2) Every central 2 cocycle is cohomologous with a skew symmetric bimultiplicative one (which is necessarily jointly continuous by [7]).

(4.3) The corresponding cohomology group H2cent (G, A) is calculated as the skew symmetric jointly continuous bimultiplicative maps modulo Homcont ([G, G]–, A).

These results generalize the case when G is a connected abelian Lie group and A = T, due to Kleppner [3]. Using standard facts of the cohomology of groups they can be interpreted as classifying all continuous central extensions (1) → A → E → G → (1) of the group G by the abelian group A. Finally some counterexamples are given to extending these results.

Let ℝ∞ be the direct limit of the Euclidean spaces ℝn. Now the orthogonal group O(∞) acts on ℝn and the direct limit O(∞) of the groups O(∞) acts on ℝ∞. The infinite pin group Pin(∞) is an extension of ℤ2 by O(∞) and admits the following presentation: the generators are the unit vectors xf in ℝ∞ and the relations are

Let G and H be Hausdorff locally compact groups. By R(G, H) we denote the space of continuous homomorphisms of G into H equipped with the compact-open topology, namely that which is generated by subsets of the form

where K is any compact subset of G and U is any open subset of H. Further, let R0(G, H) be the subset of R(G, H) consisting of elements r satisfying the conditions that the quotient space H/r(G) is compact and r is proper, i.e., the action of G on H defined as the action by left translations of r(G) on H is proper. It has been shown by H. Abels [2] that if G and H are such that at least one of them has a compact defining subset then R0(G,H) is open in R(G,H). Moreover, for each r0 ∈ R0(G,H) there exists a neighbourhood M and a compact subset F of H such that r(G) F = H for all r ∈ M and for each compact subset K of H the union is a relatively compact subset of G. It is furthermore shown in [1] that if G contains no small subgroups and H is connected then the subset of R0(G, H) consisting of isomorphisms of G into H is open in R(G, H). These results, in the case in which H is a connected Lie Group and G is a discrete group, have been established by Weil in [5] and [6] appendix 1.

Every n-dimensional manifold admits an embedding in R2n by the result of H. Whitney [11]. Lie groups are parallelizable and so by the theorem of M. W. Hirsch [5] there is an immersion of any Lie group in codimension one. However no general theorem is known which asserts that a parallelizable manifold embeds in Euclidean space of dimension less than 2n. Here we give a method for constructing smooth embeddings of compact Lie groups in Euclidean space. The construction is a fairly direct one using the geometry of the Lie group, and works very well in some cases. It does not give reasonable results for the group Spin (n) except for low values of n. We also give a method for constructing some embeddings of Spin (n), this uses the embedding of SO(n) that was constructed by the general method and an embedding theorem of A. Haefliger [3]. Although this is a very ad hoc method, it has some interest as it seems to be the first application of Haefliger's theorem which gives embedding results appreciably below twice the dimension of the manifold. The motivation for this work was to throw some light on the problem of the existence of low codimensional embeddings of parallelizable manifolds.