Representations of Certain Semidirect Product Groups* H
JOURNAL OF FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS 19, 339-372 (1975) Representations of Certain Semidirect Product Groups* JOSEPH A. WOLF Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 Communicated by the Editovs Received April I, 1974 We study a class of semidirect product groups G = N . U where N is a generalized Heisenberg group and U is a generalized indefinite unitary group. This class contains the Poincare group and the parabolic subgroups of the simple Lie groups of real rank 1. The unitary representations of G and (in the unimodular cases) the Plancherel formula for G are written out. The problem of computing Mackey obstructions is completely avoided by realizing the Fock representations of N on certain U-invariant holomorphic cohomology spaces. 1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY In this paper we write out the irreducible unitary representations for a type of semidirect product group that includes the Poincare group and the parabolic subgroups of simple Lie groups of real rank 1. If F is one of the four finite dimensional real division algebras, the corresponding groups in question are the Np,Q,F . {U(p, 4; F) xF+}, where FP~*: right vector space F”+Q with hermitian form h(x, y) = i xiyi - y xipi ) 1 lJ+1 N p,p,F: Im F + F”q* with (w. , ~o)(w, 4 = (w, + 7.0+ Im h(z, ,4, z. + 4, U(p, Q; F): unitary group of Fp,q, F+: subgroup of the group generated by F-scalar multiplication on Fp>*. * Research partially supported by N.S.F. Grant GP-16651. 339 Copyright 0 1975 by Academic Press, Inc.
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