Laplacian solitons on nilpotent Lie groups

Abstract

We investigate the existence of closed $G_2$-structures which are solitons for the Laplacian flow on nilpotent Lie groups. We obtain that seven of the twelve Lie algebras admitting a closed $G_2$-structure do admit a Laplacian soliton. Moreover, one of them admits a continuous family of Laplacian solitons which are pairwise non-homothetic and the Laplacian flow evolution on four of the Lie groups is not diagonal.