The linear transports along paths in vector bundles introduced in Ref. [1] are applied to the special case of tensor bundles over a given differentiable manifold. Links with the transports along paths generated by derivations of tensor algebras are investigated. A possible generalization of the theory of geodesics is proposed when the parallel transport generated by a linear connection is replaced with an arbitrary linear transport along paths in the tangent bundle.
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.
Curvature and torsion of linear transports along paths in, respectively, vector bundles and the tangent bundle to a differentiable manifold are defined and certain their properties are derived.
Transports along path in fibre bundles are axiomatically introduced. Their general functional form and some their simple properties are investigated. The relationships of the transports along paths and lifting of paths are studied.
The problem for consistency between linear transports along paths and real bundle metrics in real vector bundles is stated. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions, as well as conditions for existence, for such consistency are derived. All metrics (resp. transports) consistent with a given transport (resp. metric) are explicitly obtained. The special case of linear transports, generated by derivations of tensor algebras, of vectors is considered. Analogous problems are investigated in complex vector bundles endowed with Hermitian metrics.
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.
The (parallel) linear transports along paths in vector bundles are axiomatically described. Their general form and certain properties are found. It is shown that these transports are locally (i.e. along every fixed path) always Euclidean ones in a senses that there exist frames in which their matrices are unit. The investigated transports along paths are described in terms of their local coefficients, as well as in terms of derivations along paths.
A nice differential-geometric framework for (non-abelian) higher gauge theory is provided by principal 2-bundles, i.e. categorified principal bundles. Their total spaces are Lie groupoids, local trivializations are kinds of Morita equivalences, and connections are Lie-2-algebra-valued 1-forms. In this article, we construct explicitly the parallel transport of a connection on a principal 2-bundle. Parallel transport along a path is a Morita equivalence between the fibres over the end points, and parallel transport along a surface is an intertwiner between Morita equivalences. We prove that our …
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…
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.
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…
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 general problem for consistency between arbitrary transports along paths in fibre bundles and bundle morphisms between them is formulated and investigated. The special case of one fibre bundle, its morphism and transport along paths acting in it is considered. The consistency between linear transports along paths in a vector bundle and a Hermitian structure in it is studied.
This article presents a purely functional-analytic construction of the concept of stochastic parallel transport in Hermitian bundles over Riemannian manifolds. As a byproduct, we also obtain a form of the Feynman-Kac formula in vector bundles that is, to our best knowledge, the most general found so far.
Generalized are the investigated in other works of the author transports along paths in fibre bundles to transports along arbitrary maps in them. Their structure and some properties are studied. Special attention is paid to the linear case and the case when the map's domain is a Cartesian product of two sets. Also considered are the consistency with bundle morphisms and a number of special cases.
The concepts of relative velocity and acceleration, deviation velocity and acceleration and relative momentum of point particles in spaces (manifolds), the tangent bundle of which is equipped with a transport along paths, are introduced. If the tangent bundle is endowed also with a metric, it gives rise also to the notion of a relative energy. Certain ties between these quantities are considered. The cases of massless particles and of special relativity are presented in this context.
For the Jacobian resulting from the previously considered problem of the path integral reduction in Wiener path integrals for a mechanical system with symmetry describing the motion of two interacting scalar particles on a manifold that is the product of a smooth compact finite-dimensional Riemannian manifold and a finite-dimensional vector space, a geometric representation is obtained. This representation follows from the formula for the scalar curvature of the original manifold endowed by definition with a free isometric smooth action of a compact semisimple Lie group. The derivation of this…
We propose a new systematic fibre bundle formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The new form of the theory is equivalent to the usual one but it is in harmony with the modern trends in theoretical physics and potentially admits new generalizations in different directions. In it a pure state of some quantum system is described by a state section (along paths) of a (Hilbert) fibre bundle. Its evolution is determined through the bundle (analogue of the) Schrödinger equation. Now the dynamical variables and the density operator are described via bundle morphisms (along paths). The menti…
A geometric interpretation of curvature and torsion of linear transports along paths is presented. A number of (Bianchi type) identities satisfied by these quantities are derived. The obtained results contain as special cases the corresponding classical ones concerning curvature and torsion of linear connections.
The motivation for this paper stems \cite{CR} from the need to construct explicit isomorphisms of (possibly nontrivial) principal $G$-bundles on the space of loops or, more generally, of paths in some manifold $M$, over which I consider a fixed principal bundle $P$; the aforementioned bundles are then pull-backs of $P$ w.r.t. evaluation maps at different points. The explicit construction of these isomorphisms between pulled-back bundles relies on the notion of {\em parallel transport}. I introduce and discuss extensively at this point the notion of {\em generalized gauge transformation between…
The non-associativity of translations in a quantum system with magnetic field background has received renewed interest in association with topologically trivial gerbes over $\mathbb{R}^n.$ The non-associativity is described by a 3-cocycle of the group $\mathbb{R}^n$ with values in the unit circle $S^1.$ The gerbes over a space $M$ are topologically classified by the Dixmier-Douady class which is an element of $\mathrm{H}^3(M,\mathbb{Z}).$ However, there is a finer description in terms of local differential forms of degrees $d=0,1,2,3$ and the case of the magnetic translations for $n=3$ the 2-f…
We provide a new perspective on parallel 2-transport and principal 2-group bundles with 2-connection. We define parallel 2-transport as a 2-functor from the thin fundamental 2-groupoid to the 2-category of 2-group torsors. The definition of the 2-category of 2-group torsors is new, and we develop the tools necessary for computations in this 2-category. We prove a version of the non-Abelian Stokes Theorem and the Ambrose-Singer Theorem for 2-transport. This definition motivated by the fact that principal $G$-bundles with connection are equivalent to functors from the thin fundamental groupoid t…
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 vector bundle with connection over a supermanifold leads naturally to a notion of parallel transport along superpaths. In this note we show that {\it every} such parallel transport along superpaths comes form a vector bundle with connection, at least when the base supermanifold is a manifold.
The displacement and deviation vectors in spaces (manifolds), the tangent bundle of which is endowed with a transport along paths, are introduced. In case these spaces are equipped with a linear connection, the deviation equations (between arbitrary, geodesic or not, paths) in such spaces are investigated.
We study a type of connection forms, given by Chen integrals, over pathspaces by placing such forms within a category-theoretic framework of principal bundles and connections. We introduce a notion of 'decorated' principal bundles, develop parallel transport on such bundles, and explore specific examples in the context of pathspaces.
Parallel transport of a connection in a smooth fibre bundle yields a functor from the path groupoid of the base manifold into a category that describes the fibres of the bundle. We characterize functors obtained like this by two notions we introduce: local trivializations and smooth descent data. This provides a way to substitute categories of functors for categories of smooth fibre bundles with connection. We indicate that this concept can be generalized to connections in categorified bundles, and how this generalization improves the understanding of higher dimensional parallel transport.
We make evident a curvature tensor for every vector sub-bundle of an arbitrary manifold tangent bundle which reduces to the curvature tensor of an Ehresmann connection in the case of the horizontal sub-bundle of the tangent bundle to the total space of the nonlinear fiber bundle on which the connection is defined. Then the classical theorem of Frobenius would characterize the complete integrability of a vector sub-bundle of the tangent bundle by a zero curvature tensor in the sense of our definition here. A basic tool is a result about the curvature tensor of the natural lift of the vector sub…
We propose a version of the non-relativistic quantum mechanics in which the pure states of a quantum system are described as sections of a Hilbert (generally infinitely-dimensional) fibre bundle over the space-time. There evolution is governed via (a kind of) a parallel transport in this bundle. Some problems concerning observables are considered. There are derived the equations of motion for the state sections and observables. We show that up to a constant the matrix of the coefficients of the evolution operator (transport) coincides with the matrix of the Hamiltonian of the investigated quan…
This note addresses the construction of a notion of parallel transport along superpaths arising from the concept of a superconnection on a vector bundle over a manifold $M$. A superpath in $M$ is, loosely speaking, a path in $M$ together with an odd vector field in $M$ along the path. We also develop a notion of parallel transport associated with a connection (a.k.a. covariant derivative) on a vector bundle over a \emph{supermanifold} which is a direct generalization of the classical notion of parallel transport for connections over manifolds.
The construction of a linear connection on a pullback bundle from a connection on a vector bundle is explained in terms of fiberwise linear approximation. This procedure clarifies the geometric meaning of the linearized connection as well as the associated parallel transport and curvature.
We show that the moduli space of positive Ricci curvature metrics on all the total spaces of $S^7$-bundles over $S^8$ which are rational homology spheres has infinitely many path components. Furthermore, we carry out the diffeomorphism classification of quotients of Milnor spheres by a certain involution and show that the moduli space of metrics of non-negative sectional on them has infinitely many path components. Finally, a diffeomorphism finiteness result is obtained on quotients of Shimada spheres by the same type of involution and we show that for the types that can be expressed by an inf…
Recently, a set of tools has been developed with the purpose of the study of Quantum Gravity. Until now, there have been very few attempts to put these tools into a rigorous mathematical framework. This is the case, for example, of the so called path bundle of a manifold. It is well known that this topological principal bundle plays the role of a universal bundle for the reconstruction of principal bundles and their connections. The path bundle is canonically endowed with a parallel transport and associated with it important types of derivatives have been considered by several authors: the Man…
We give a generalization of the notion of a Cartan-Ehresmann connection from Lie algebras to L-infinity algebras and use it to study the obstruction theory of lifts through higher String-like extensions of Lie algebras. We find (generalized) Chern-Simons and BF-theory functionals this way and describe aspects of their parallel transport and quantization. It is known that over a D-brane the Kalb-Ramond background field of the string restricts to a 2-bundle with connection (a gerbe) which can be seen as the obstruction to lifting the PU(H)-bundle on the D-brane to a U(H)-bundle. We discuss how t…
Just as gauge theory describes the parallel transport of point particles using connections on bundles, higher gauge theory describes the parallel transport of 1-dimensional objects (e.g. strings) using 2-connections on 2-bundles. A 2-bundle is a categorified version of a bundle: that is, one where the fiber is not a manifold but a category with a suitable smooth structure. Where gauge theory uses Lie groups and Lie algebras, higher gauge theory uses their categorified analogues: Lie 2-groups and Lie 2-algebras. We describe a theory of 2-connections on principal 2-bundles and explain how this i…
A linear section of a double vector bundle is a parallel pair of sections which form a vector bundle morphism; examples include the complete lifts of vector fields to tangent bundles and the horizontal lifts arising from a connection in a vector bundle. A grid in a double vector bundle consists of two linear sections, one in each structure, and thus provides two paths from the base manifold to the top space; the warp of the grid measures the lack of commutativity of the two paths. For a double vector bundle $D$, a linear section induces a linear map on the relevant dual of $D$ and thence a lin…
In this note we make use of some properties of vector fields on a manifold to give an alternate proof to [3] for the equivalence between connections and parallel transport on vector bundles over manifolds. Out of the proof will emerge a new approach to connections on a bundle as a consistent way to lift the dynamics of the manifold to the bundle.
An almost complex structure J on a 4-manifold X may be described in terms of a rank 2 vector bundle E. A splitting of J consists of a pair of line bundles spanning E. A hypersurface M in X satisfying a nondegeneracy condition inherits a CR-structure from J and a path geometry from the splitting. Using the Cartan-Kähler theorem we show that locally every real analytic path geometry is induced by an embedding into C^2 equipped with the splitting generated by the real and imaginary part of the standard holomorphic volume form. As a corollary we obtain the well-known fact that every 3-dimensional …
In this paper we review the recently proposed path-integral counterpart of the Koopman-von Neumann operatorial approach to classical Hamiltonian mechanics. We identify in particular the geometrical variables entering this formulation and show that they are essentially a basis of the cotangent bundle to the tangent bundle to phase-space. In this space we introduce an extended Poisson brackets structure which allows us to re-do all the usual Cartan calculus on symplectic manifolds via these brackets. We also briefly sketch how the Schouten-Nijenhuis, the Frölicher- Nijenhuis and the Nijenhuis-Ri…
We generalize the notion of parallel transport along paths for abelian bundles to parallel transport along surfaces for abelian gerbes using an embedded Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) approach. We show both for bundles and gerbes with connection that there is a one-to-one correspondence between their local description in terms of locally-defined functions and forms and their non-local description in terms of a suitable class of embedded TQFT's.
Let G be a connected Lie group, LG its loop group, and PG->G the principal LG-bundle defined by quasi-periodic paths in G. This paper is devoted to differential geometry of the Atiyah algebroid A=T(PG)/LG of this bundle. Given a symmetric bilinear form on the Lie algebra g and the corresponding central extension of Lg, we consider the lifting problem for A, and show how the cohomology class of the Cartan 3-form on G arises as an obstruction. This involves the construction of a 2-form on PG with differential the pull-back of the Cartan form. In the second part of this paper we obtain similar LG…
