Reductions of higher tangent bundles of Lie groupoids provide natural examples of geometric structures which we would like to call higher algebroids. Such objects can be also constructed abstractly starting from an arbitrary almost Lie algebroid. A higher algebroid is, in principle, a graded bundle equipped with a differential relation of special kind (a Zakrzewski morphism). In the paper we investigate basic properties of higher algebroids and show some applications. Namely, we develop a geometric framework for variational calculus on higher algebroids (including both forces and momenta). Such a formalism covers simultaneously variational problems on higher tangent bundles, first-order problems on algebroids and higher-order problems reduced by symmetries.
String and M theories seem to require generalizations of usual notions of differential geometry. Such generalizations usually involve extending the tangent bundle to larger vector bundles equipped with various algebroid structures. The most general geometric scheme is not well understood yet, and a unifying framework for such algebroid structures is needed. Our aim in this paper is to propose such a general framework. Our strategy is to follow the hierarchy of defining axioms for a Courant algebroid: almost-Courant - metric - pre-Courant - Courant. In particular, we focus on the symmetric part…
We give an explicit description, in terms of bracket, anchor, and pairing, of the standard cochain complex associated to a Courant algebroid. In this formulation, the differential satisfies a formula that is formally identical to the Cartan formula for the de Rham differential. This perspective allows us to develop the theory of Courant algebroid connections in a way that mirrors the classical theory of connections. Using a special class of connections, we construct secondary characteristic classes associated to any Courant algebroid.
Exterior differential calculus in generalized Lie algebras(algebroids) category with applications to interior and exterior algebraic(differential) systems
In this paper, we construct a homotopy Poisson algebra of degree 3 associated to a split Lie 2-algebroid, by which we give a new approach to characterize a split Lie 2-bialgebroid. We develop the differential calculus associated to a split Lie 2-algebroid and establish the Manin triple theory for split Lie 2-algebroids. More precisely, we give the notion of a strict Dirac structure and define a Manin triple for split Lie 2-algebroids to be a CLWX 2-algebroid with two transversal strict Dirac structures. We show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between Manin triples for split Lie 2-alg…
