Spectra of Compact Quotients of the Oscillator Group

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to harmonic analysis of compact solvmanifolds. We consider the four-dimensional oscillator group ${\rm Osc}_1$, which is a semi-direct product of the three-dimensional Heisenberg group and the real line. We classify the lattices of ${\rm Osc}_1$ up to inner automorphisms of ${\rm Osc}_1$. For every lattice $L$ in ${\rm Osc}_1$, we compute the decomposition of the right regular representation of ${\rm Osc}_1$ on $L^2(L\backslash{\rm Osc}_1)$ into irreducible unitary representations. This decomposition allows the explicit computation of the spectrum of the wave operator on the compact locally-symmetric Lorentzian manifold $L\backslash {\rm Osc}_1$.