The Restricted Lorentz Group
As stated above, the restricted Lorentz group is the identity component of the Lorentz group. This means that it consists of all Lorentz transformations which can be connected to the identity by a continuous curve lying in the group. The restricted Lorentz group is a connected normal subgroup of the full Lorentz group with the same dimension (in this case, 6 dimensions).
The restricted Lorentz group is generated by ordinary spatial rotations and Lorentz boosts (which can be thought of as hyperbolic rotations in a plane that includes a time-like direction). The set of all rotations forms a Lie subgroup isomorphic to the ordinary rotation group SO(3). The set of all boosts, however, does not form a subgroup, since composing two boosts does not, in general, result in another boost. (Rather, a pair of non-colinear boosts is equivalent to a boost and a rotation, and this relates to Thomas rotation.)
A boost in some direction, or a rotation about some axis, each generate a one-parameter subgroup. An arbitrary rotation is specified by 3 real parameters, as is an arbitrary boost. Since every proper, orthochronous Lorentz transformation can be written as a product of a rotation and a boost, it takes 6 real numbers (parameters) to specify an arbitrary proper orthochronous Lorentz transformation. This is one way to understand why the restricted Lorentz group is six dimensional. (See also Lie algebra of the Lorentz group.) To specify an arbitrary Lorentz transformation requires a further two bits of information, which pick out one of the four connected components. This pattern is typical of finite dimensional Lie groups.
Read more about this topic: Lorentz Group
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