Contributions to Real Exponential Lie Groups

 A Lie group is called exponential if its exponential map is surjective. It is called weakly exponential if the exponential image is dense, which is equivalent to the connectivity of each of the Cartan subgroups (compare [11]). In the present paper the authors study exponential Lie groups which are of mixed type, i.e., neither solvable nor semisimple. Necessary conditions and also, for special mixed Lie groups, sufficient conditions are given for exponentiality. Several counter examples are provided showing that none of the conditions which have surfaced during the course of our investigation can work as necessary and sufficient ones. All conditions considered deal with centralizers of ad-nilpotent elements of the Lie algebra. For example, it is shown that if G is exponential, there is a rather large characteristic subgroup B which contains the nilradical, all Levi factors, and all maximal compactly embedded subgroups, which is also exponential. Moreover, this subgroup is also Mal’cev splittable so that one can apply earlier results on Mal’cev splittable exponential Lie groups, which characterize exponentiality of these Lie groups (also by conditions concerning the centralizers of ad-nilpotent elements). (Received 1 June 1999; in final form 28 December 1999)