Type-I permanence

We prove a number of results on the survival of the type-I property under extensions of locally compact groups: (a) that given a closed normal embedding \mathbb {N}\trianglelefteq \mathbb {E} of locally compact groups and a twisted action (\alpha ,\tau ) thereof on a (post)liminal C^*-algebra A the twisted crossed product A\rtimes _{\alpha ,\tau }\mathbb {E} is again (post)liminal and (b) a number of converses to the effect that under various conditions a normal, closed, cocompact subgroup \mathbb {N}\trianglelefteq \mathbb {E} is type-I as soon as \mathbb {E} is. This happens for instance if \mathbb {N} is discrete and \mathbb {E} is Lie, or if \mathbb {N} is finitely-generated discrete (with no further restrictions except cocompactness). Examples show that there is not much scope for dropping these conditions. In the same spirit, call a locally compact group \mathbb {G} type-I-preserving if all semidirect products \mathbb {N}\rtimes \mathbb {G} are type-I as soon as \mathbb {N} is, and linearly type-I-preserving if the same conclusion holds for semidirect products V\rtimes \mathbb {G} arising from finite-dimensional \mathbb {G}-representations. We characterize the (linearly) type-I-preserving groups that are (1) discrete-by-compact-Lie, (2) nilpotent, or (3) solvable Lie.