Representing the automorphism group of an almost crystallographic group

Let be an almost crystallographic (AC-) group, corresponding to the simply connected, connected, nilpotent Lie group and with holonomy group . If , there is a faithful representation . In case is crystallographic, this condition is known to be equivalent to or . We will show (Example 2.2) that, for AC-groups , this is no longer valid and should be adapted. A generalised equivalent algebraic (and easier to verify) condition is presented (Theorem 2.3). Corresponding to an AC-group and by factoring out subsequent centers we construct a series of AC-groups, which becomes constant after a finite number of terms. Under suitable conditions, this opens a way to represent faithfully in (Theorem 4.1). We show how this can be used to calculate . This is of importance, especially, when is almost Bieberbach and, hence, is known to have an interesting geometric meaning.