Lie group structures on symmetry groups of principal bundles (Q2460020)

The paper presents a method of obtaining Lie group structures on the group of bundle automorphisms and of vertical bundle automorphisms of a principal bundle P with compact base M. One considers Lie group structures on the group of vertical bundle automorphisms Gau(P). It is shown that the full automorphism group Aut(P) may be interpreted as an extension of an open subgroup of Diff(M) by Gau(M). It is emphasized that Aut(P) describes most natural gauge field symmetries and space-time symmetries in a unified way. Conditions for the extension of these Lie group structures are derived explicitly. It is shown that, for special types of bundles, Gau(P) may be interpreted as a Kac-Moody group and Aut(P) as the automorphism group of the corresponding Kac-Moody algebra. It is suggested that this gives also geometric interpretations of these groups and leads to topological information on them.