In general relativity, the gravitational potential is represented by the Levi-Civita connection, the only symmetric connection preserving the metric. On a differentiable manifold, a metric identifies with an orthogonal structure, defined as a Lorentz reduction of the frame bundle. The Levi-Civita connection appears as the only symmetric connection preserving the reduction. This paper presents generalization of this process to other aproaches of gravitation: Weyl structure with Weyl connections, teleparallel structures with Weitzenbock connections, unimodular structure, similarly appear as frame bundle reductions, with preserving connections. To each subgroup H of the linear group GL correspond reduced structures, or H-structures. They are subbundles of the frame bundle (with GL as principal group), with H as principal group. A linear connection in a manifold M is a principal connection on the frame bundle. Given a reduction, the corresponding preserving connections on M are the linear connections which preserve it. I also show that the time gauge used in the 3+1 formalism for general relativity similarly appears as the result of a bundle reduction.
We present in the most natural way, that is, in the context of the theory of vector and principal bundles and connections in them, fundamental geometrical concepts related to General Relativity and one of its extensions, the Einstein-Cartan theory.
The paper contains a review on the general connection theory on differentiable fibre bundles. Particular attention is paid to (linear) connections on vector bundles. The (local) representations of connections in frames adapted to holonomic and arbitrary frames is considered.
A review of the parallel transport (translation) in fibre bundles is presented. The connections between transports along paths and parallel transports in fibre bundles are examined. It is proved that the latter ones are special cases of the former.
The theory of frames normal for general connections on differentiable bundles is developed. Links with the existing theory of frames normal for covariant derivative operators (linear connections) in vector bundles are revealed. The existence of bundle coordinates normal at a given point and/or along injective horizontal path is proved. A necessary and sufficient condition of existence of bundle coordinates normal along injective horizontal mappings is derived.
A linear connection is associated to a nonlinear connection on a vector bundle by a linearization procedure. Our definition is intrinsic in terms of vector fields on the bundle. For a connection on an affine bundle our procedure can be applied after homogenization and restriction. Several applications in Classical Mechanics are provided.
The parallel linear transports defined by flat linear connection are axiomatically described. On this basis a number of properties, some of which are new, of these transports and connections are derived.
We develop an alternative view on the concept of connections over a vector bundle map, which consists of a horizontal lift procedure to a prolonged bundle. We further focus on prolongations to an affine bundle and introduce the concept of affineness of a generalised connection.
This work revisits, from a geometric perspective, the notion of discrete connection on a principal bundle, introduced by M. Leok, J. Marsden and A. Weinstein. It provides precise definitions of discrete connection, discrete connection form and discrete horizontal lift and studies some of their basic properties and relationships. An existence result for discrete connections on principal bundles equipped with appropriate Riemannian metrics is proved.
Frames normal for linear connections in vector bundles are defined and studied. In particular, such frames exist at every fixed point and/or along injective path. Inertial frames for gauge fields are introduced and on this ground the principle of equivalence for (system of) gauge fields is formulated.
Two explicit formulas for metric connections in the bundle of Dirac spinors are studied. Their equivalence is proved. The explicit formula relating the spinor curvature tensor with the Riemann curvature tensor is rederived.
We show that the holonomy of a connection defined on a principal composite bundle is related by a non-abelian Stokes theorem to the composition of the holonomies associated with the connections of the component bundles of the composite. We apply this formalism to describe the non-abelian geometric phase (when the geometric phase generator does not commute with the dynamical phase generator). We find then an assumption to obtain a new kind of separation between the dynamical and the geometric phases. We also apply this formalism to the gauge theory of gravity in the presence of a Dirac spinor f…
We study the existence of a natural `linearisation' process for generalised connections on an affine bundle. It is shown that this leads to an affine generalised connection over a prolonged bundle, which is the analogue of what is called a connection of Berwald type in the standard theory of connections. Various new insights are being obtained in the fine structure of affine bundles over an anchored vector bundle and affineness of generalised connections on such bundles.
For a principal bundle $P\to M$ equipped with a connection ${\bar A}$, we study an infinite dimensional bundle ${\mathcal P}^{\rm dec}_{\bar A}P$ over the space of paths on $M$, with the points of ${\mathcal P}^{\rm dec}_{\bar A}P$ being horizontal paths on $P$ decorated with elements of a second structure group. We construct parallel transport processes on such bundles and study holonomy bundles in this setting. We explain the relationship with categorical geometry and explore the notion of categorical connections on categorical principal bundles in a concrete differential geometric way.
The characteristic forms in the bundle of connections of a principal bundle P over M determine the characteristic classes of P for degree less or equal to the dimension of M, and differential forms on the space of connections for higher degree. The equivariant characteristic classes provide canonical equivariant extensions of this forms, and so cohomology classes in the quotient space of connections modulo gauge transformations. More generally, given a closed differential form in M and a characteristic form, we obtain a cohomology class in the space of connections modulo gauge transformations,…
Canonical gravity can be formulated by means of a densitized dreibein together with an SU(2) connection. These so-called Ashtekar variables are the fundamental quantities, loop quantum gravity is resting on. In this paper we review these variables from the perspective of fibre bundles. This is straightforward for the dreibein field as this is simply a frame. The Ashtekar connection, however, is more complicated. It turns out, that at the level of the tangent bundle, it is given by the Levi-Civita connection plus a multiple of the Weingarten mapping, whose action on vector fields is induced fro…
The present work provides a mathematically rigorous account on super fiber bundle theory, connection forms and their parallel transport, that ties together various approaches. We begin with a detailed introduction to super fiber bundles. We then introduce the concept of so-called relative supermanifolds as well as bundles and connections defined in these categories. Studying these objects turns out to be of utmost importance in order to, among other things, model anticommuting classical fermionic fields in mathematical physics. We then construct the parallel transport map corresponding to such…
It is known that the bundle of Dirac spinors is produced as a direct sum of two bundles - the bundle of chiral spinors and its Hermitian conjugate bundle. In this paper some aspects of metric connections for chiral and Dirac spinors are resumed and their relation is studied.
We provide a pedagogical introduction to the theory of principal 2-bundles with adjusted connections and show how they enter the description of geometric and non-geometric T-dualities as proposed in arXiv:2204.01783. This description combines the torus fibrations as well as the gerbe containing the Kalb-Ramond $B$-field into a single geometric object, a particular case of a non-abelian gerbe. The $B$-field and the metric are encoded in the connection of this categorified principal bundle, and a T-duality is described as a particular span or correspondence of such bundles. The formalism is mani…
Graded bundles are a particularly nice class of graded manifolds and represent a natural generalisation of vector bundles. By exploiting the formalism of supermanifolds to describe Lie algebroids we define the notion of a weighted $A$-connection on a graded bundle. In a natural sense weighted $A$-connections are adapted to the basic geometric structure of a graded bundle in the same way as linear $A$-connections are adapted to the structure of a vector bundle. This notion generalises directly to multi-graded bundles and in particular we present the notion of a bi-weighted $A$-connection on a d…
We deal with the construction of covariant derivatives for some quite general Ehresmann connections on fibre bundles. We show how the introduction of a vertical endomorphism allows construction of covariant derivatives separately on both the vertical and horizontal distributions of the connection which can then be glued together on the total space. We give applications across an important class of tangent bundle cases, frame bundles and the Hopf bundle.
It is shown that any dynamic equation on a configuration bundle $Q\to R$ of non-relativistic time-dependent mechanics is associated with connections on the affine jet bundle $J^1Q\to Q$ and on the tangent bundle $TQ\to Q$. As a consequence, any non-relativistic dynamic equation can be seen as a geodesic equation with respect to a (non-linear) connection on the tangent bundle $TQ\to Q$. Using this fact, the relationship between relativistic and non-relativistic equations of motion is studied. The geometric notions of reference frames and relative accelerations in non-relativistic mechanics are …
We study invariant gauge fields over the 4-dimensional non-reductive pseudo-Riemannian homogeneous spaces G/K recently classified by Fels & Renner (2006). Given H compact semi-simple, classification results are obtained for principal H-bundles over G/K admitting: (1) a G-action (by bundle automorphisms) projecting to left multiplication on the base, and (2) at least one G-invariant connection. There are two cases which admit nontrivial examples of such bundles and all G-invariant connections on these bundles are Yang-Mills. The validity of the principle of symmetric criticality (PSC) is invest…
We express the first jet bundle of curves in Euclidean space as homogeneous spaces associated to a Galilean-type group. Certain Cartan connections on a manifold with values in the Lie algebra of the Galilean group are characterized as geometries associated to systems of second order ordinary differential equations. We show these Cartan connections admit a form of normal coordinates, and that in these normal coordinates the geodesic equations of the connection are second order ordinary differential equations. We then classify such connections by some of their torsions, extending a classical the…
We prove that the category of abelian gerbes with connection over a smooth manifold is equivalent to a certain category of principal bundles over the free loop space. These bundles are equipped with a connection and with a "fusion" product with respect to triples of paths. The equivalence is established by explicit functors in both directions: transgression and regression. We describe applications to geometric lifting problems and loop group extensions.
The axiomatic approach to parallel transport theory is partially discussed. Bijective correspondences between the sets of connections, (axiomatically defined) parallel transports, and transports along paths satisfying some additional conditions, are constructed. In particular, the equivalence between the concepts "connection" and "(axiomatically defined) parallel transport" is established. Some results which are specific for topological and vector bundles are presented.
In this paper we introduce a notion of parallel transport for principal bundles with connections over differentiable stacks. We show that principal bundles with connections over stacks can be recovered from their parallel transport thereby extending the results of Barrett, Caetano and Picken, and Schreiber and Waldof from manifolds to stacks. In the process of proving our main result we simplify Schreiber and Waldorf's definition of a transport functor for principal bundles with connections over manifolds and provide a more direct proof of the correspondence between principal bundles with conn…
For a strict Lie 2-group, we develop a notion of Lie 2-algebra-valued differential forms on Lie groupoids, furnishing a differential graded-commutative Lie algebra equipped with an adjoint action of the Lie 2-group and a pullback operation along Morita equivalences between Lie groupoids. Using this notion, we define connections on principal 2-bundles as Lie 2-algebra-valued 1-forms on the total space Lie groupoid of the 2-bundle, satisfying a condition in complete analogy to connections on ordinary principal bundles. We carefully treat various notions of curvature, and prove a classification r…
We show that the prequantum line bundle on the moduli space of flat $SU(2)$ connections on a closed Riemann surface of positive genus has degree 1. It then follows from work of Lawton and the second author that the classifying map for this line bundle induces a homotopy equivalence between the stable moduli space of flat $SU(N)$ connections, in the limit as $N$ tends to infinity, and $\mathbb{C}P^\infty$. Applications to the stable moduli space of flat unitary connections are also discussed.
Let $X$ be a smooth projective curve over a field of characteristic zero and let $D$ be a non-empty set of rational points of $X$. We calculate the motivic classes of moduli stacks of semistable parabolic bundles with connections on $(X,D)$ and motivic classes of moduli stacks of semistable parabolic Higgs bundles on $(X,D)$. As a by-product we give a criteria for non-emptiness of these moduli stacks, which can be viewed as a version of the Deligne-Simpson problem.
We study spectral triples over noncommutative principal U(1) bundles. Basing on the classical situation and the abstract algebraic approach, we propose an operatorial definition for a connection and compatibility between the connection and the Dirac operator on the total space and on the base space of the bundle. We analyze in details the example of the noncommutative three-torus viewed as a U(1) bundle over the noncommutative two-torus and find all connections compatible with an admissible Dirac operator. Conversely, we find a family of new Dirac operators on the noncommutative tori, which ar…
We review our construction of star-products on Poisson manifolds and discuss some examples. In particular, we work out the relation with Fedosov's original construction in the symplectic case.
We consider Dirac operators on odd-dimensional compact spin manifolds which are twisted by a product bundle. We show that the space of connections on the twisting bundle which yield an invertible operator has infinitely many connected components if the untwisted Dirac operator is invertible and the dimension of the twisting bundle is sufficiently large.
A classic result in the foundations of Yang-Mills theory, due to J. W. Barrett ["Holonomy and Path Structures in General Relativity and Yang-Mills Theory." Int. J. Th. Phys. 30(9), (1991)], establishes that given a "generalized" holonomy map from the space of piece-wise smooth, closed curves based at some point of a manifold to a Lie group, there exists a principal bundle with that group as structure group and a principal connection on that bundle such that the holonomy map corresponds to the holonomies of that connection. Barrett also provided one sense in which this "recovery theorem" yields…
The geometry of the total space of a principal bundle with regard to the action of the bundle's structure group is elegantly described by the bundle's operation, a collection of derivations consisting of the de Rham differential and the contraction and Lie derivatives of all vertical vector fields and satisfying the six Cartan relations. Connections and gauge transformations are defined by the way they behave under the action of the operation's derivations. In the first paper of a series of two extending the ordinary theory, we constructed an operational total space theory of strict principal …
