Moduli of Einstein and non-Einstein nilradicals

A nilpotent Lie algebra is called an Einstein nilradical if the corresponding Lie group admits a left-invariant Ricci soliton metric. While these metrics are of independent interest, their existence is intimately related to the existence of Einstein metrics on solvable Lie groups. In this note we are concerned with the following question: How are the Einstein and non-Einstein nilradicals distributed among nilpotent Lie algebras? A full answer to this question is not known and we restrict to the class of 2-step nilpotent Lie groups. Within this class, it is known that a generic group admits a Ricci soliton metric. Using techniques from Geometric Invariant Theory, we study the set of non-generic algebras to learn more about the distribution of non-Einstein nilradicals. Many new (continuous) families of non-isomorphic, non-Einstein nilradicals are constructed. Moreover, the dimension of these families can be arbitrarily large (depending on the dimension of the underlying Lie group). To show such large classes of Lie groups are pairwise non-isomorphic, a new technique is developed to distinguish between Lie algebras.