Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
Let Γ.𝒜 be the semi-direct product group of a nuclear Lie group Γ with the additive group 𝒜 of a real nuclear vector space. We give an explicit description of all the continuous representations of Γ.𝒜 the restriction of which to 𝒜 is a cyclic unitary representation, and a necessary and sufficient condition for the unitarity of such cylindrical representations is stated. This general result is successfully used to obtain irreducible unitary representations of the nuclear Lie groups of Riemannian motions, and, in the setting of the theory of multiplicative distributions initiated by I.M. Gelfand, it is proved that for any connected real finite dimensional Lie group G and for any strictly positive integer k there exist non located and non trivially decomposable representations of order k of the nuclear Lie group (M;G) of all the G-valued test-functions on a given paracompact manifold M.