By a special symplectic connection we mean a torsion free connection which is either the Levi-Civita connection of a Bochner-Kähler metric of arbitrary signature, a Bochner-bi-Lagrangian connection, a connection of Ricci type or a connection with special symplectic holonomy. A manifold or orbifold with such a connection is called special symplectic.
We show that the symplectic reduction of (an open cell of) a parabolic contact manifold by a symmetry vector field is special symplectic in a canonical way. Moreover, we show that any special symplectic manifold or orbifold is locally equivalent to one of these symplectic reductions.
As a consequence, we are able to prove a number of global properties, including a classification in the compact simply connected case.
Let $(M,ω)$ be a symplectic manifold and $F$ be a Finsler structure on $M$. In the present paper we define a lift of the symplectic two-form $ω$ on the manifold $TM\backslash 0$, and find the conditions that the Chern connection of the Finsler structure $F$ preserves this lift of $ω$. In this situation if $M$ admits a nowhere zero vector field then we have a non-empty family of Fedosov structures on $M$.
Consider a holomorphic submersion between compact Kähler manifolds, such that each fibre admits a constant scalar curvature Kähler metric. When the fibres admit continuous automorphisms, a choice of fibrewise constant scalar curvature Kähler metric is not unique. An optimal symplectic connection is choice of fibrewise constant scalar curvature Kähler metric satisfying a geometric partial differential equation. The condition generalises the Hermite-Einstein condition for a holomorphic vector bundle, through the induced fibrewise Fubini-Study metric on the associated projectivisation. We prove v…
We investigate G-invariant symplectic structures on the cotangent bundle T*P of a principal G-bundle P(M,G) which are canonically related to automorphisms of the tangent bundle TP covering the identity map of P and commuting with the action of TG on TP. The symplectic structures corresponding to connections on P(M,G) are also investigated. The Marsden-Weinstein reduction procedure for these symplectic structures is discussed.
In [11], I. M. Gelfand, V. Retakh, and M. Shubin defined the symplectic sectional curvature of a torsion-free connection preserving a symplectic form. The present article defines the corresponding notion of constant symplectic sectional curvature and characterizes this notion in terms of the curvature tensor of the symplectic connection and its covariant derivatives. Some relations between various more general conditions on the symplectic sectional curvature and the geometry of the symplectic connection or that induced on a symplectic submanifold are explored as well.
On a symplectic manifold, there is a natural elliptic complex replacing the de Rham complex. It can be coupled to a vector bundle with connection and, when the curvature of this connection is constrained to be a multiple of the symplectic form, we find a new complex. In particular, on complex projective space with its Fubini-Study form and connection, we can build a series of differential complexes akin to the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand complexes from parabolic differential geometry.
We give an elementary construction of symplectic connections through reduction. This provides an elegant description of a class of symmetric spaces and gives examples of symplectic connections with Ricci type curvature, which are not locally symmetric; the existence of such symplectic connections was unknown.
In this paper we construct a Hitchin connection in a setting, which significantly generalizes the setting covered by the first author previously, which in turn was a generalisation of the moduli space case covered by Hitchin in his original work on the Hitchin connection. In fact, our construction provides a Hitchin connection, which is a partial connection on the space of all compatible complex structures on an arbitrary, but fixed prequantizable symplectic manifold, which satisfies a certain Fano type condition. The subspace of the tangent space to the space of compatible complex structures …
We classify nilmanifolds with an invariant symplectic half-flat structure. We solve the half-flat evolution equations in one example, writing down the resulting Ricci-flat metric. We study the geometry of the orbit space of 6-manifolds with an SU(3)-structure preserved by a U(1) action, giving characterizations in the symplectic half-flat and integrable case.
We introduce a symplectic structure on the space of connections in a G-principal bundle over a four-manifold and the Hamiltonian action on it of the group of gauge transformations which are trivial on the boundary. The symplectic reduction becomes the moduli space of flat connections over the manifold. On the moduli space of flat connections we shall construct a hermitian line bundle with connection whose curvature is given by the symplectic form. This is the Chern-Simons prequantum line bundle. The group of gauge transformations on the boundary of the base manifold acts on the moduli space of…
Conditions are given under which an infinitesimal automorphism of a torsion-free connection preserving a symplectic form is necessarily a symplectic vector field. An example is given of a compact symplectic manifold admitting a flat symplectic connection and an infinitesimal automorphism that is not symplectic.
We study the irreducible decomposition under Sp(2n, R) of the space of torsion tensors of almost symplectic connections. Then a description of all symplectic quadratic invariants of torsion-like tensors is given. When applied to a manifold M with an almost symplectic structure, these instruments give preliminary insight for finding a preferred linear almost symplectic connection on M . We rediscover Ph. Tondeur's Theorem on almost symplectic connections. Properties of torsion of the vectorial kind are deduced.
In this note we give conditions which ensure the reduction of a symplectic connection in the process of a Marsden-Weinstein reduction and of the reduction of a presymplectic manifold.
We show, in this note, that on any symplectic supermanifold, even or odd, there exist an infinite dimensional affine space of symmetric connections, compatible to the symplectic form.
A Yang-Mills theory in a purely symplectic framework is developed. The corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations are derived and first integrals are given. We relate the results to the work of Bourgeois and Cahen on preferred symplectic connections.
Using Fedosov's approach we give a geometric construction of a formal symplectic groupoid over any Poisson manifold endowed with a torsion-free Poisson contravariant connection. In the case of Kaehler-Poisson manifolds this construction provides, in particular, the formal symplectic groupoids with separation of variables. We show that the dual of a semisimple Lie algebra does not admit torsion-free Poisson contravariant connections.
This article is an overview of the results obtained in recent years on symplectic connections. We present what is known about preferred connections (critical points of a variational principle). The class of Ricci-type connections (for which the curvature is entirely determined by the Ricci tensor) is described in detail, as well as its far reaching generalization to special connections. A twistorial construction shows a relation between Ricci-type connections and complex geometry. We give a construction of Ricci-flat symplectic connections. We end up by presenting, through an explicit example,…
The notion of special symplectic connections is closely related to contact parabolic geometries due to the work of M. Cahen and L. Schwachhöfer. We remind their characterization and reinterpret the result in terms of generalized Weyl connections. The aim of this paper is to provide an alternative and more explicit construction of special symplectic connections of three types from the list. This is done by pulling back an ambient linear connection from the total space of a natural scale bundle over the homogeneous model of the corresponding contact parabolic structure.
The main result of this paper gives a new construction of extremal Kähler metrics on the total space of certain holomorphic submersions, giving a vast generalisation and unification of results of Hong, Fine and others. The principal new ingredient is a novel geometric partial differential equation on such fibrations, which we call the optimal symplectic connection equation. We begin with a smooth fibration for which all fibres admit a constant scalar curvature Kähler metric. When the fibres admit automorphisms, such metrics are not unique in general, but rather are unique up to the action of t…
We continue our study of symplectically flat bundles. We broaden the notion of symplectically flat connections on symplectic manifolds to $ζ$-flat connections on smooth manifolds. These connections on principal bundles can be represented by maps from an extension of the base's fundamental group to the structure group. We introduce functionals with zeroes being symplectically flat connections and study their critical points. Such functionals lead to novel geometric flows. We also describe some characteristic classes of the $ζ$-flat bundles.
We deform the moment map picture on the space of symplectic connections on a symplectic manifold. To do that, we study a vector bundle of Fedosov star product algebras on the space of symplectic connections. We describe a natural formal connection on this bundle adapted to the star product algebras on the fibers. We study its curvature and show the star product trace of the curvature is a formal symplectic form on the space of symplectic connections. The action of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms on symplectic connections preserves the formal symplectic structure and we show the star product trace …
The space of symplectic connections on a symplectic manifold is a symplectic affine space. M. Cahen and S. Gutt showed that the action of the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms on this space is Hamiltonian and calculated the moment map. This is analogous to, but distinct from, the action of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms on the space of compatible almost complex structures that motivates study of extremal Kähler metrics. In particular, moment constant connections are critical, where a symplectic connection is \textit{critical} if it is critical, with respect to arbitrary variations, for the $L^…
Our aim is to support the choice of two remarkable connections with torsion in a 3-Sasakian manifold, proving that, in contrast to the Levi-Civita connection, the holonomy group in the homogeneous cases reduces to a proper subgroup of the special orthogonal group, of dimension considerably smaller. We realize the computations of the holonomies in a unified way, by using as a main algebraic tool a nonassociative structure, that one of symplectic triple system.
A polysymplectic structure is a vector-valued symplectic form, that is, a closed nondegenerate 2-form with values in a vector space. We first outline the polysymplectic Hamiltonian formalism with coefficients in a vector space $V$, then apply this framework to show that the moduli space $\mathcal{M}(P)$ of flat connections on a principal bundle $P$ over a compact manifold $M$ is a polysymplectic reduction of the space $\mathcal{A}(P)$ of all connections on $P$ by the action of the gauge group $\mathcal{G}$ with respect to a natural $Ω^2(M)/B^2(M)$-valued symplectic structure on $\mathcal{A}(P)…
Let X be a smooth complex projective curve and S a finite subset of X. We show that an orthogonal or symplectic parabolic Higgs bundle on X with parabolic structure over S admits a Hermitian-Einstein connection if and only if it is polystable.
We consider analytic curves $\nabla^t$ of symplectic connections of Ricci type on the torus $T^{2n}$ with $\nabla^0$ the standard connection. We show, by a recursion argument, that if $\nabla^t$ is a formal curve of such connections then there exists a formal curve of symplectomorphisms $ψ_t$ such that $ψ_t\cdot\nabla^t$ is a formal curve of flat invariant symplectic connections and so $\nabla^t$ is flat for all $t$. Applying this result to the Taylor series of the analytic curve, it means that analytic curves of symplectic connections of Ricci type starting at $\nabla^0$ are also flat. The gr…
The main result of this article provides a characterization of reductive homogeneous spaces equipped with some geometric structure (non necessarily pseudo-Riemannian) in terms of the existence of certain connection. The result generalizes the well-known result of Ambrose and Singer for Riemannian homogeneous spaces, as well as its extensions for other geometries found in the literature. The manifold must be connected and simply connected, the connection has to be complete and has to satisfy a set of geometric partial differential equations. If the connection is not complete or the manifold is …
We consider canonical symplectic structure on the moduli space of flat ${\g}$-connections on a Riemann surface of genus $g$ with $n$ marked points. For ${\g}$ being a semisimple Lie algebra we obtain an explicit efficient formula for this symplectic form and prove that it may be represented as a sum of $n$ copies of Kirillov symplectic form on the orbit of dressing transformations in the Poisson-Lie group $G^{*}$ and $g$ copies of the symplectic structure on the Heisenberg double of the Poisson-Lie group $G$ (the pair ($G,G^{*}$) corresponds to the Lie algebra ${\g}$).
From a view point of the moment map, we shall introduce the notion of Einstein-Hermitian generalized connections over a generalized Kähler manifold of symplectic type. We show that moduli spaces of Einstein-Hermitian generalized connections arise as the Kähler quotients. The deformation complex of Einstein-Hermitian generalized connections is an elliptic complex and it turns out that the smooth part of the moduli space is a finite dimensional Kähler manifold. The canonical line bundle over a generalized Kähler manifold of symplectic type has the canonical generalized connection and its curvatu…
We apply the results from the article Cahen, Schwachhöfer: Special symplectic connections, to the case of Bochner-Kaehler metrics. We obtain a (local) classification of these based on the orbit types of the adjoint action in $su(n,1)$. The relation between Sasaki and Bochner-Kaehler metrics in cone and transveral metrics constructions is discussed. The connection of the special symplectic and Weyl connections is outlined. The duality between the Ricci-type and Bochner-Kaehler metrics is shown.
Given the Euclidean space $\R^{2n+2}$ endowed with a constant symplectic structure and the standard flat connection, and given a polynomial of degree 2 on that space, Baguis and Cahen have defined a reduction procedure which yields a symplectic manifold endowed with a Ricci-type connection. We observe that any symplectic manifold of dimension greater than 2 endowed with a symplectic connection of Ricci-type is locally given by a local version of such a reduction. We also consider the reverse of this reduction procedure, an induction procedure: we construct globally on a symplectic manifold end…
We prove that an integrable system over a symplectic manifold, whose symplectic form is covariantly constant w.r.t. the Gauss-Manin connection, carries a natural hyper-symplectic structure. Moreover, a special Kaehler structure is induced on the base manifold.
We consider odd Poisson (odd symplectic) structure on supermanifolds induced by an odd symmetric rank $2$ (non-degenerate) contravariant tensor field. We describe the difference between odd Riemannian and odd symplectic structure in terms of the Cartan prolongation of the corresponding Lie algebras, and formulate an analogue of the Levi-Civita theorem for an odd symplectic supermanifold.
A (biased and incomplete) review of the status of the theory of symplectic connections on supermanifolds is presented. Also, some comments regarding Fedosov's technique of quantization are made.
We discuss the interplay between lagrangian distributions and connections in symplectic geometry, beginning with the traditional case of symplectic manifolds and then passing to the more general context of poly- and multisymplectic structures on fiber bundles, which is relevant for the covariant hamiltonian formulation of classical field theory. In particular, we generalize Weinstein's tubular neighborhood theorem for symplectic manifolds carrying a (simple) lagrangian foliation to this situation. In all cases, the Bott connection, or an appropriately extended version thereof, plays a central …
We consider invariant symplectic connections $\nabla$ on homogeneous symplectic manifolds $(M,ω)$ with curvature of Ricci type. Such connections are solutions of a variational problem studied by Bourgeois and Cahen, and provide an integrable almost complex structure on the bundle of almost complex structures compatible with the symplectic structure. If $M$ is compact with finite fundamental group then $(M,ω)$ is symplectomorphic to $¶_n(\C)$ with a multiple of its Kähler form and $\nabla$ is affinely equivalent to the Levi-Civita connection.
We investigate special lcs and twisted Hamiltonian torus actions on strict lcs manifolds and characterize them geometrically in terms of the minimal presentation. We prove a convexity theorem for the corresponding twisted moment map, establishing thus an analog of the symplectic convexity theorem of Atiyah and Guillemin-Sternberg. We also prove similar results for the symplectic moment map (defined on the minimal presentation) whose image is then a convex cone. In the special case of a compact toric Vaisman manifold, we obtain a structure theorem.
We give a general construction of extremal Kaehler metrics on the total space of certain holomorphic submersions, extending results of Dervan-Sektnan, Fine, and Hong. We consider submersions whose fibres admit a degeneration to Kaehler manifolds with constant scalar curvature, in a way that is compatible with the fibration structure. Thus we allow fibres that are K-semistable, rather than K-polystable; this is crucial to moduli theory. On these fibrations we phrase a partial differential equation whose solutions, called optimal symplectic connections, represent a canonical choice of a relative…
We study symplectic manifolds $(M^{2l},ω)$ equipped with a symplectic torsion-free affine (also called Fedosov) connection $\nabla$ and admitting a metaplectic structure. Let $\mathcal{S}$ be the so called symplectic spinor bundle and let $R^S$ be the curvature tensor field of the symplectic spinor covariant derivative $\nabla^S$ associated to the Fedosov connection $\nabla.$ It is known that the space of symplectic spinor valued exterior differential 2-forms, $Γ(M,\bigwedge^2T^*M\otimes {\mathcal{S}}),$ decomposes into three invariant spaces with respect to the structure group, which is the m…
Homogeneous compatible almost complex structures on symplectic manifolds are studied, focusing on those which are special, meaning that their Chern-Ricci form is a multiple of the symplectic form. Non Chern-Ricci flat ones are proven to be covered by co-adjoint orbits. Conversely, compact isotropy co-adjoint orbits of semi-simple Lie groups are shown to admit special compatible almost complex structures whenever they satisfy a necessary topological condition. Some classes of examples including twistor spaces of hyperbolic manifolds and discrete quotients of Griffiths period domains of weight t…
For a symplectic manifold admitting a metaplectic structure (a symplectic analogue of the Riemannian spin structure), we construct a sequence consisting of differential operators using a symplectic torsion-free affine connection. All but one of these operators are of first order. The first order ones are symplectic analogues of the twistor operators known from Riemannian spin geometry. We prove that under the condition the symplectic Weyl curvature tensor field of the symplectic connection vanishes, the mentioned sequence forms a complex. This gives rise to a new complex for the so called Ricc…
We introduce a class of first order G-structures, each of which has an underlying almost conformally symplectic structure. There is one such structure for each real simple Lie algebra which is not of type $C_n$ and admits a contact grading. We show that a structure of each of these types on a smooth manifold $M$ determines a canonical compatible linear connection on the tangent bundle $TM$. This connection is characterized by a normalization condition on its torsion. The algebraic background for this result is proved using Kostant's theorem on Lie algebra cohomology. For each type, we give an …
We give a new characterization of flat affine manifolds in terms of an action of the Lie algebra of classical infinitesimal affine transformations on the bundle of linear frames. We characterize flat affine symplectic Lie groups using symplectic étale affine representations and as a consequence of this, we show that a flat affine symplectic Lie group with bi-invariant symplectic connection contains a nontrivial one parameter subgroup formed by central translations. We give two methods for constructing flat affine symplectic Lie groups, thus obtaining all those having bi-invariant symplectic co…
A canonical connection is attached to any k-symplectic manifold. We study the properties of this connection and its geometric applications to k-symplectic manifolds. In particular we prove that, under some natural assumption, any ksymplectic manifold admits an Ehresmann connection, discussing some corollaries of this result, and we find vanishing theorems for characteristic classes on a k-symplectic manifold.
B. Fedosov has given a simple and very natural construction of a deformation quantization for any symplectic manifold, using a flat connection on the bundle of formal Weyl algebras associated to the tangent bundle of a symplectic manifold. The connection is obtained by affinizing, nonlinearizing, and iteratively flattening a given torsion free symplectic connection. In this paper, a classical analog of Fedosov's operations on connections is analyzed and shown to produce the usual exponential mapping of a linear connection on an ordinary manifold. A symplectic version is also analyzed. Finally,…
Having fixed a Kaehler class and the unique corresponding hyperkaehler metric, we prove that all special Lagrangian submanifolds of an irreducible symplectic 4-fold X are bi-Lagrangian and that they are obtained by complex submanifolds via a sort of "hyperkaehler rotation trick"; thus they retain part of the rigidity of complex submanifolds: indeed all special Lagrangian submanifolds of X turn out to be real analytic.
We study almost Hermitian 4-manifolds with holonomy algebra, for the canonical Hermitian connection, of dimension at most one. We show how Riemannian 4-manifolds admitting five orthonormal symplectic forms fit therein and classify them. In this set-up we also fully describe almost Kaehler 4-manifolds.
K-polystability is, on the one hand, conjecturally equivalent to the existence of certain canonical Kähler metrics on polarised varieties, and, on the other hand, conjecturally gives the correct notion to form moduli. We introduce a notion of stability for families of K-polystable varieties, extending the classical notion of slope stability of a bundle, viewed as a family of K-polystable varieties via the associated projectivisation. We conjecture that this is the correct condition for forming moduli of fibrations. Our main result relates this stability condition to Kähler geometry: we prove t…
Let $G$ be a simple complex Lie group, $\alg{g}$ be its Lie algebra, $K$ be a maximal compact form of $G$ and $\alg{k}$ be a Lie algebra of $K$. We denote by $X\rightarrow \overline{X}$ the anti-involution of $\alg{g}$ which singles out the compact form $\alg{k}$. Consider the space of flat $\alg{g}$-valued connections on a Riemann sphere with three holes which satisfy the additional condition $\overline{A(z)}=-A(\overline{z})$. We call the quotient of this space over the action of the gauge group $\overline{g(z)}=g^{-1}(\overline{z})$ a \emph{hyperbolic} moduli space of flat connections. We p…
In this paper we study the symplectic and Poisson geometry of moduli spaces of flat connections over quilted surfaces. These are surfaces where the structure group varies from region to region in the surface, and where a reduction (or relation) of structure occurs along the boundaries of the regions. Our main theoretical tool is a new form moment-map reduction in the context of Dirac geometry. This reduction framework allows us to use very general relations of structure groups, and to investigate both the symplectic and Poisson geometry of the resulting moduli spaces from a unified perspective…
This is the last part of a series of articles on a family of geometric structures (PACS-structures) which all have an underlying almost conformally symplectic structure. While the first part of the series was devoted to the general study of these structures, the second part focused on the case that the underlying structure is conformally symplectic (PCS-structures). In that case, we obtained a close relation to parabolic contact structures via a concept of parabolic contactification. It was also shown that special symplectic connections (and thus all connections of exotic symplectic holonomy) …
Let L->M be a Hermitian line bundle over a compact manifold. Write S for the space of all unitary connections in L whose curvatures define symplectic forms on M and G for the group of unitary bundle isometries of L, which acts on S by pull-back. The main observation of this note is that S carries a G-invariant symplectic structure, there is a moment map for the G-action and that this embeds the components of S as G_0-coadjoint orbits (where G_0 is the component of the identity). Restricting to the subgroup of G which covers the identity on M, we see that prescribing the volume form of a symple…
We prove the bounded isometry conjecture of F. Lalonde and L. Polterovich for a special class of closed symplectic manifolds. As a byproduct, it is shown that the flux group of a product of these special symplectic manifold is isomorphic to the direct sum of the flux group of each symplectic manifold.
A special symplectic Lie group is a triple $(G,ω,\nabla)$ such that $G$ is a finite-dimensional real Lie group and $ω$ is a left invariant symplectic form on $G$ which is parallel with respect to a left invariant affine structure $\nabla$. In this paper starting from a special symplectic Lie group we show how to ``deform" the standard Lie group structure on the (co)tangent bundle through the left invariant affine structure $\nabla$ such that the resulting Lie group admits families of left invariant hypersymplectic structures and thus becomes a hypersymplectic Lie group. We consider the affine …
An almost Kähler structure on a symplectic manifold $(N, ω)$ consists of a Riemannian metric $g$ and an almost complex structure $J$ such that the symplectic form $ω$ satisfies $ω(\cdot, \cdot)=g(J(\cdot), \cdot)$. Any symplectic manifold admits an almost Kähler structure and we refer to $(N, ω, g, J)$ as an almost Kähler manifold. In this article, we propose a natural evolution equation to investigate the deformation of Lagrangian submanifolds in almost Kähler manifolds. A metric and complex connection $\hn$ on $TN$ defines a generalized mean curvature vector field along any Lagrangian subman…
