Closed Affine Manifolds with an Invariant Line

Abstract

A closed affine manifold is a closed manifold with coordinate patches into affine space whose transition maps are restrictions of affine automorphisms. Such a structure gives rise to a local diffeomorphism from the universal cover of the manifold to affine space that is equivariant with respect to a homomorphism from the fundamental group to the group of affine automorphisms. The local diffeomorphism and homomorphism are referred to as the developing map and holonomy respectively. In the case where the linear holonomy preserves a common vector, certain `large' open subsets upon which the developing map is a diffeomorphism onto its image are constructed. A modified proof of the fact that a radiant manifold cannot have its fixed point in the developing image is presented. Combining these results, this paper addresses the non-existence of certain closed affine manifolds whose holonomy leaves invariant an affine line. Specifically, if the affine holonomy acts purely by translations on the invariant line, then the developing image cannot meet this line.