Classification of nilpotent almost abelian Lie groups admitting left-invariant complex or symplectic structures

We classify the nilpotent almost abelian Lie algebras admitting complex or symplectic structures. It turns out that if a nilpotent almost abelian Lie algebra admits a complex structure, then it necessarily admits a symplectic structure. Given an even dimensional almost abelian Lie algebra, we show that it always admits a complex structure when it is 2-step nilpotent and it always admits a symplectic structure when it is k-step nilpotent for k=2, \, 3 or 4. Several consequences of the classification theorems are obtained.