Kleinian group

In mathematics, a Kleinian group is a discrete subgroup of the group of orientation-preserving isometries of hyperbolic 3-space . The latter, identifiable with , is the quotient group of the 2 by 2 complex matrices of determinant 1 by their center, which consists of the identity matrix and its product by . has a natural representation as orientation-preserving conformal transformations of the Riemann sphere, and as orientation-preserving conformal transformations of the open unit ball in . The group of Möbius transformations is also related as the non-orientation-preserving isometry group of , . So, a Kleinian group can be regarded as a discrete subgroup acting on one of these spaces. History The theory of general Kleinian groups was founded by and , who named them after Felix Klein. The special case of Schottky groups had been studied a few years earlier, in 1877, by Schottky. Definitions One modern definition of Kleinian group is as a group which acts on the 3-ball as a discrete group of hyperbolic isometries. Hyperbolic 3-space has a natural boundary; in the ball model, this can be identified with the 2-sphere. We call it the sphere at infinity, and denote it by . A hyperbolic isometry extends to a conformal homeomorphism of the sphere at infinity (and conversely, every conformal homeomorphism on the sphere at infinity extends uniquely to a hyperbolic isometry on the ball by Poincaré extension. It is a standard result from complex analysis that conformal homeomorphisms on the Riemann sphere are exactly the Möbius transformations, which can further be identified as elements of the projective linear group PGL(2,C). Thus, a Kleinian group can also be defined as a subgroup Γ of PGL(2,C). Classically, a Kleinian group was required to act properly discontinuously on a non-empty open subset of the Riemann sphere, but modern usage allows any discrete subgroup.