Flat Nonunimodular Lorentzian Lie Algebras

A flat Lorentzian Lie algebra is a left symmetric algebra endowed with a symmetric bilinear form of signature (−, +,…, +) such that left multiplications are skew-symmetric. In geometrical terms, a flat Lorentzian Lie algebra is the Lie algebra of a Lie group with a left-invariant Lorentzian metric with vanishing curvature. In this article, we show that any flat nonunimodular Lorentzian Lie algebras can be obtained as a double extension of flat Riemannian Lie algebras. As an application, we give all flat nonunimodular Lorentzian Lie algebras up to dimension 4.