TITLE: Nilpotent Lie group homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^n$?
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: Is it true that a connected, simply connected, nilpotent $n$-dimensional Lie group $G$ is homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^n$?
EDIT:
Maybe a possible argument is the following: Since $G$ is simply connected, $G$ cannot contain any non-trivial maximal compact subgroups. By a theorem associated to Iwasawa and Malcev, all maximal compact subgroups are conjugate and thus have the same dimension. By a theorem by Hochschild(?), $G/K$ is diffeomorphic to $\mathbb R^n$, where $K$ is a(ny) maximal compact subgroup. But for $G$ simply connected, connected, nilpotent, $K$ must be trivial, whence $G$ itself is diffeomorphic to $\mathbb R^n$.

REPLY [2 votes]: Let $G$ be a simply connected nilpotent Lie group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$. The nilpotency of $G$ implies that the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula has only finitely many terms, so it converges everywhere on $\mathfrak g$. So it can be used to define a group law $\times$ on the Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$ such that $(\mathfrak g,\times)$ is a Lie group whose Lie algebra is isomorphic to $\mathfrak g$. Since two simply connected Lie groups with the same Lie algebra are isomorphic, $G$ is isomorphic to $(\mathfrak g,\times)$. In particular, $G$ is homeomorphic to $\mathfrak g$.