The chains studied in this paper generalize Chern-Moser chains for CR structures. They form a distinguished family of one dimensional submanifolds in manifolds endowed with a parabolic contact structure. Both the parabolic contact structure and the system of chains can be equivalently encoded as Cartan geometries (of different types). The aim of this paper is to study the relation between these two Cartan geometries for Lagrangean contact structures and partially integrable almost CR structures.
We develop a general method for extending Cartan geometries which generalizes the Cartan geometry interpretation of Fefferman's construction of a conformal structure associated to a CR structure. For the two structures in question, we show that the Cartan geometry associated to the family of chains can be obtained in that way if and only if the original parabolic contact structure is torsion free. In particular, the procedure works exactly on the subclass of (integrable) CR structures.
This tight relation between the two Cartan geometries leads to an explicit description of the Cartan curvature associated to the family of chains. On the one hand, this shows that the homogeneous models for the two parabolic contact structures give rise to examples of non-flat path geometries with large automorphism groups. On the other hand, we show that one may (almost) reconstruct the underlying torsion free parabolic contact structure from the Cartan curvature associated to the chains. In particular, this leads to a very conceptual proof of the fact that chain preserving contact diffeomorphisms are either isomorphisms or anti-isomorphisms of parabolic contact structures.
We pursue the study of holomorphic Cartan geometry with singularities. We introduce the notion of logarithmic Cartan geometry on a complex manifold, with polar part supported on a normal crossing divisor. In particular, we show that the push-forward of a Cartan geometry constructed using a finite Galois ramified covering is a logarithmic Cartan geometry (the polar part is supported on the ramification locus). We also study the specific case of the logarithmic Cartan geometry with the model being the complex affine space.
Earlier we introduced and studied the concept of holomorphic {\it branched Cartan geometry}. We define here a foliated version of this notion; this is done in terms of Atiyah bundle. We show that any complex compact manifold of algebraic dimension $d$ admits, away from a closed analytic subset of positive codimension, a nonsingular holomorphic foliation of complex codimension $d$ endowed with a transversely flat branched complex projective geometry (equivalently, a ${\mathbb C}P^d$-geometry). We also prove that transversely branched holomorphic Cartan geometries on compact complex projective r…
Let $M^3 \subset \mathbb{C}^2$ be a $\mathcal{C}^ω$ Levi nondegenerate hypersurface. In the literature, Cartan-Moser chains are detected from rather advanced considerations: either from the construction of a Cartan connection associated with the CR equivalence problem; or from the construction of a formal or converging Poincaré-Moser normal form. This note provides an alternative direct elementary construction, based on the inspection of the Lie prolongations of $5$ infinitesimal holomorphic automorphisms to the space of second order jets of CR-transversal curves. Within the $4$-dimensional je…
In this continuation of \cite{BDS}, we investigate the deformations of holomorphic Cartan geometries where the underlying complex manifold is allowed to move. The space of infinitesimal deformations of a flat holomorphic Cartan geometry is computed. We show that the natural forgetful map, from the infinitesimal deformations of a flat holomorphic Cartan geometry to the infinitesimal deformations of the underlying flat principal bundle on the topological manifold, is an isomorphism.
We give a differential geometric description of the Cartan (or tractor) bundle and its canonical connection in CR geometry, thus offering a direct, alternative, definition to the usual abstract approach.
The differential geometry of $3$-dimensional Bianchi, Cartan and Vranceanu ($BCV$) spaces is well known. We introduce the extended Bianchi, Cartan and Vranceanu ($EBCV$) spaces as a natural seven dimensional generalization of $BCV$ spaces and study some of their main geometric properties, such as the Levi-Civita connection, Ricci curvatures, Killing fields and geodesics.
We show that the extended principal bundle of a Cartan geometry of type $(A(m,\mathbb{R}),GL(m,\mathbb{R}))$, endowed with its extended connection $\hatω$, is isomorphic to the principal $A(m,\mathbb{R})$-bundle of affine frames endowed with the affine connection as defined in classical Kobayashi-Nomizu volume I. Then we classify the local holonomy groups of the Cartan geometry canonically associated to a Riemannian manifold. It follows that if the holonomy group of the Cartan geometry canonically associated to a Riemannian manifold is compact then the Riemannian manifold is locally a product …
We give an introduction to the theory of varieties of minimal rational tangents, emphasizing its aspect as a fusion of algebraic geometry and differential geometry, more specifically, a fusion of Mori geometry of minimal rational curves and Cartan geometry of cone structures.
Introducing the deformation theory of holomorphic Cartan geometries, we compute infinitesimal automorphisms and infinitesimal deformations. We also prove the existence of a semi-universal deformation of a holomorphic Cartan geometry.
We extend the notion of (branched) holomorphic Cartan geometry on a complex manifold to the context of Sasakian manifolds. Branched holomorphic Cartan geometries on Sasakian Calabi-Yau manifolds are investigated.
This is the lecture 4 of a mini-course of 4 lectures. Our purpose of this mini-curse is to explain some ideas of E. Cartan and S. Lie when we study differential geometry, particularly we will to explain the Cartan reduction method. The Cartan reduction method is a technique in Differential Geometry for determining whether two geometrical structure are the same up to a diffeomorphism. This method use new tools of differential geometry as principal bundles, $G$-structures and jets theory. We start with an example of a $G$-structure: the 3-webs in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. Here we use the Cartan method t…
This is the lecture 3 of a mini-course of 4 lectures. Our purpose of this mini-curse is to explain some ideas of E. Cartan and S. Lie when we study differential geometry, particularly we will to explain the Cartan reduction method. The Cartan reduction method is a technique in Differential Geometry for determining whether two geometrical structure are the same up to a diffeomorphism. This method use new tools of differential geometry as principal bundles, $G$-structures and jets theory. We start with an example of a $G$-structure: the 3-webs in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. Here we use the Cartan method t…
This is the lecture 1 of a mini-course of 4 lectures. Our purpose of this mini-curse is to explain some ideas of E. Cartan and S. Lie when we study differential geometry, particularly we will to explain the Cartan reduction method. The Cartan reduction method is a technique in Differential Geometry for determining whether two geometrical structure are the same up to a diffeomorphism. This method use new tools of differential geometry as principal bundles, $G$-structures and jets theory. We start with an example of a $G$-structure: the 3-webs in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. Here we use the Cartan method t…
This is the lecture 2 of a mini-course of 4 lectures. Our purpose of this mini-curse is to explain some ideas of E. Cartan and S. Lie when we study differential geometry, particularly we will to explain the Cartan reduction method. The Cartan reduction method is a technique in Differential Geometry for determining whether two geometrical structure are the same up to a diffeomorphism. This method use new tools of differential geometry as principal bundles, $G$-structures and jets theory. We start with an example of a $G$-structure: the 3-webs in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. Here we use the Cartan method t…
This paper studies the geometry of Cartan-Hartogs domains from the symplectic point of view. Inspired by duality between compact and noncompact Hermitian symmetric spaces, we construct a dual counterpart of Cartan-Hartogs domains and give explicit expression of global Darboux coordinates for both Cartan-Hartogs and their dual. Further, we compute their symplectic capacity and show that a Cartan-Hartogs admits a symplectic duality if and only if it reduces to be a complex hyperbolic space.
In this paper, we show that associated to any coisotropic Cartan geometry there is a twisted Courant algebroid. This includes in particular parabolic geometries. Using this twisted Courant structure, we give some new results about the Cartan curvature and the Weyl structure of a parabolic geometry. As more direct applications, we have Lie 2-algebra and 3D AKSZ sigma model with background associated to any coisotropic Cartan geometry.
We prove that any compact Kähler manifold bearing a holomorphic Cartan geometry contains a rational curve just when the Cartan geometry is inherited from a holomorphic Cartan geometry on a lower dimensional compact Kähler manifold.
We introduce linear Dirac and generalized complex structures on Cartan geometries and give criteria for Dirac subalgebras of $\frkg\ltimes\frkg^*$ representing Dirac structures on a Cartan geometry. We prove that there is a bijection between the linear generalized structures on a torsion free Cartan geometry and the equivariant generalized structures on its corresponding homogeneous space.
The geometric content of the MacDowell-Mansouri formulation of general relativity is best understood in terms of Cartan geometry. In particular, Cartan geometry gives clear geometric meaning to the MacDowell-Mansouri trick of combining the Levi-Civita connection and coframe field, or soldering form, into a single physical field. The Cartan perspective allows us to view physical spacetime as tangentially approximated by an arbitrary homogeneous "model spacetime", including not only the flat Minkowski model, as is implicitly used in standard general relativity, but also de Sitter, anti de Sitter…
Let X be a compact connected Kaehler manifold such that the holomorphic tangent bundle TX is numerically effective. A theorem of Demailly, Peternell and Schenider says that there is a finite unramified Galois covering M --> X, a complex torus T, and a holomorphic surjective submersion f: M --> T, such that the fibers of f are Fano manifolds with numerically effective tangent bundle. A conjecture of Campana and Peternell says that the fibers of f are rational and homogeneous. Assume that X admits a holomorphic Cartan geometry. We prove that the fibers of f are rational homogeneous varieties. We…
In 1931 Elie Cartan constructed a geometry which was rarely considered. Cartan proposed a way to define an infinitesimal metric $ds$ starting from a variational problem on hypersurfaces in an $n$-dimensional manifold $\mathcal{M}$. This distance depends not only of the point $\textsc{m}\in\mathcal{M}$ but on the orientation of a hyperplane in the tangent space $T_{\textsc{m}}\mathcal{M}$. His first step is a natural definition of the orthogonal direction to such tangent hyperplane. In this paper we extend it, starting form considerations from the calculus of variation.
Let $G$ be a simply connected Lie group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. We show that the following categories are naturally equivalent. The category $\mathsf{Mod}(C(G))$, of sufficiently smooth modules over the DG-algebra of singular chains on $G$. The category $\mathsf{Rep}(Tg)$ of representations of the DG-Lie algebra $T\mathfrak{g}$, which is universal for the Cartan relations. This equivalence extends the correspondence between representations of $G$ and representations of $\mathfrak{g}$. In a companion paper we show that in the compact case, the equivalence can be extended to an $\mathsf…
In the early phase of general relativity Elie Cartan and Hermann Weyl thought about the question of how the role of transformation groups could be transferred from classical geometry (Erlangen program) to differential geometry. They had different starting points and used different techniques, but both generalized the concept of connection arising from Levi-Civita's interpretation of the classical Christoffel symbols as parallel transfer in curved spaces. Their focus differed and Cartan headed toward a much more general framwork than Weyl (non-holonomous spaces versus scale gauge geometry). But…
In this paper we introduce a new type of exponential map in semi-simple compact Lie groups, which is related to the sub-Riemannian geometry generated by the orthogonal complement of a Cartan subalgebra in a similar way to how the group exponential map is related to the Riemannian geometry.
Lightlike Cartan geometries are introduced as Cartan geometries modelled on the future lightlike cone in Lorentz-Minkowski spacetime. Then, we provide an approach to the study of lightlike manifolds from this point of view. It is stated that every lightlike Cartan geometry on a manifold $N$ provides a lightlike metric $h$ with radical distribution globally spanned by a vector field $Z$. For lightlike hypersurfaces of a Lorentz manifold, we give the condition that characterizes when the pull-back of the Levi-Civita connection form of the ambient manifold is a lightlike Cartan connection on such…
In this paper, the natural foliations in cotangent bundle T*M of Cartan space (M,K) are studied. It is shown that the geometry of these foliations is closely related to the geometry of the Cartan space (M,K) itself. This approach is used to obtain new characterizations of Cartan spaces with negative constant curvature.
The semi-classical data attached to stacks of algebroids in the sense of Kashiwara and Kontsevich are Maurer-Cartan elements on complex manifolds, which we call extended Poisson structures as they generalize holomorphic Poisson structures. A canonical Lie algebroid is associated to each Maurer-Cartan element. We study the geometry underlying these Maurer-Cartan elements in the light of Lie algebroid theory. In particular, we extend Lichnerowicz-Poisson cohomology and Koszul-Brylinski homology to the realm of extended Poisson manifolds; we establish a sufficient criterion for these to be finite…
We investigate the Cartan and Finsler geometry of the rotating Kepler problem, a limit case of the restricted three body problem that arises if the mass of the one of the primaries goes to zero. We show that the Hamiltonian for the rotating Kepler problem can be regarded as the Legendre transform of a certain family of Finsler metrics on the two-sphere. For very negative energy levels, these Finsler metrics are close to the round metric, and the associated flag curvature is hence positive. On the other hand, we show that the flag curvature can become negative once the energy level becomes suff…
We develop a holonomy reduction procedure for general Cartan geometries. We show that, given a reduction of holonomy, the underlying manifold naturally decomposes into a disjoint union of initial submanifolds. Each such submanifold corresponds to an orbit of the holonomy group on the modelling homogeneous space and carries a canonical induced Cartan geometry. The result can therefore be understood as a `curved orbit decomposition'. The theory is then applied to the study of several invariant overdetermined differential equations in projective, conformal and CR-geometry. This makes use of an eq…
We show that the horizon geometry for supersymmetric black hole solutions of minimal five-dimensional gauged supergravity is that of a particular Einstein-Cartan-Weyl (ECW) structure in three dimensions, involving the trace and traceless part of both torsion and nonmetricity, and obeying some precise constraints. In the limit of zero cosmological constant, the set of nonlinear partial differential equations characterizing this ECW structure reduces correctly to that of a hyper-CR Einstein-Weyl structure in the Gauduchon gauge, which was shown by Dunajski, Gutowski and Sabra to be the horizon g…
We develop a non-relativistic twistor theory, in which Newton--Cartan structures of Newtonian gravity correspond to complex three-manifolds with a four-parameter family of rational curves with normal bundle ${\mathcal O}\oplus{\mathcal O}(2)$. We show that the Newton--Cartan space-times are unstable under the general Kodaira deformation of the twistor complex structure. The Newton--Cartan connections can nevertheless be reconstructed from Merkulov's generalisation of the Kodaira map augmented by a choice of a holomorphic line bundle over the twistor space trivial on twistor lines. The Coriolis…
Let $p$ be a Lie subalgebra of a semisimple Lie algebra $g$ and $(G,P)$ be the corresponding pair of connected Lie groups. A Cartan geometry of type $(G,P)$ associates to a smooth manifold $M$ a principal $P$-bundle and a Cartan connection, and a parabolic geometry is a Cartan geometry where $P$ is parabolic. We show that if $P$ is parabolic, the adjoint tractor bundle of a Cartan geometry, which is isomorphic to the Atiyah algebroid of the principal $P$-bundle, admits the structure of a (pre-)Courant algebroid, and we identify the topological obstruction to the bracket being a Courant bracket…
Starting from the classical notion of an oriented congruence (i.e. a foliation by oriented curves) in $R^3$, we abstract the notion of an oriented congruence structure. This is a 3-dimensional CR manifold $(M,H, J)$ with a preferred splitting of the tangent space $TM=V\oplus H$. We find all local invariants of such structures using Cartan's equivalence method refining Cartan's classification of 3-dimensional CR structures. We use these invariants and perform Fefferman like constructions, to obtain interesting Lorentzian metrics in four dimensions, which include explicit Ricci-flat and Einstein…
The norm of Cartan torsion plays an important role for studying of immersion theory in Finsler geometry. Indeed, Finsler manifold with unbounded Cartan torsion can not be isometrically imbedded into any Minkowski space. In this paper, we find two subclasses of (?, ?)-metrics which have bounded Cartan torsion. Then, we give two subclasses of (?, ?)-metrics whose bound on the Cartan torsions are independent of the norm of ?.
Let $G$ be a simply connected Lie group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ and denote by $\mathrm{C}_{\bullet}(G)$ the DG Hopf algebra of smooth singular chains on $G$. In a companion paper it was shown that the category of sufficiently smooth modules over $\mathrm{C}_{\bullet}(G)$ is equivalent to the category of representations of $\mathbb{T} \mathfrak{g}$, the DG Lie algebra which is universal for the Cartan relations. In this paper we show that, if $G$ is compact, this equivalence of categories can be extended to an $\mathsf{A}_{\infty}$-quasi-equivalence of the corresponding DG categories. A…
In [DM] it was asked whether all flat holomorphic Cartan geometries (G,H) on a complex torus are translation invariant. We answer this affimatively under the assumption that the complex Lie group G is affine. More precisely, we show that every holomorphic Cartan geometry of type (G,H), with G a complex affine Lie group, on any complex torus is translation invariant.
We describe invariant principal and Cartan connections on homogeneous principal bundles and show how to calculate the curvature and the holonomy; in the case of an invariant Cartan connection we give a formula for the infinitesimal automorphisms. The main result of this paper is that the above calculations are purely algorithmic. As an example of an homogeneous parabolic geometry we treat a conformal structure on the product of two spheres.
The recently discovered fourth class of Frobenius manifolds by Combe--Manin in opened and highlighted new geometric domains to explore. The guiding mantra of this article is to show the existence of hidden geometric aspects of the fourth Frobenius manifold, which turns out to be related to so-called causality conditions. Firstly, it is proved that the fourth class of Frobenius manifolds is a Pseudo-Elliptic one. Secondly, this manifold turns out to be a sub-manifold of a non-orientable Lorentzian projective manifold. Thirdly, Maurer--Cartan structures for this manifold and hidden geometrical p…
We study local automorphisms of holomorphic Cartan geometries. This leads to classification results for compact complex manifolds admitting Cartan geometries. We prove that a compact Calabi-Yau manifold bearing a holomorphic Cartan geometry of algebraic type admits a finite unramified cover which is a complex torus.
On a Finsler manifold $(M,L)$, we consider the change $L\longrightarrow\bar{L}(x,y)=e^{σ(x)}L(x,y)+β(x,y)$, which we call a $β$-conformal change. This change generalizes various types of changes in Finsler geometry: conformal, $C$-conformal, $h$-conformal, Randers and generalized Randers changes. Under this change, we obtain an explicit expression relating the Cartan connection associated to $(M,L)$ and the transformed Cartan connection associated to $(M,\bar{L})$. We also express some of the fundamental geometric objects (canonical spray, nonlinear connection, torsion tensors, ...etc.) of $(M…
We prove a theorem relating the automorphism group of a Cartan geometry to the group on which the geometry is modeled: a component of the adjoint representation of the first embeds in the adjoint representation of the second. Consequences of the theorem include general bounds on the rank and nilpotence degree of an automorphism group; a result asserting local homogeneity and completeness of parabolic geometries admitting a maximal-rank group of automorphisms; and a local freeness theorem for actions additionally preserving a continuous volume form.
Parametric Cartan theory of exterior differential systems, and explicit cohomology of projective manifolds reveal united rationality features of differential algebraic geometry.
The Klein-Grifone approach to global Finsler geometry is adopted. The nullity distributions of the three curvature tensors of Cartan connection are investigated. Nullity distributions concerning certain relevant special Finsler spaces are considered. Concrete examples are given whenever the situation needs.
This work is a spin-off of an on-going programme which aims at revisiting the original studies of Lie and Cartan on pseudogroups and geometric structures from a modern perspective. We encode geometric structures induced by transitive Lie pseudogroups into principal $G$-bundles equipped with a transversally parallelisable foliation generated by a subalgebra of $\mathfrak{g}$, called Cartan bundles. Our approach is complementary to arXiv:1911.13147 and is based on Morita equivalence of Lie groupoids. After identifying the main examples and properties, we develop a notion of flatness with respect…
