Graded Lie-Cartan pairs. II: The fermionic differential calculus (Q1098926)

In a previous paper of the authors [Rep. Math. Phys. 25, No. 1, 1--51 (1988; Zbl 0656.17014)], the Lie-Cartan pairs, describing the algebraic features of the classical operators of differential geometry, are generalized to the case of ``anticommuting variables''. In this paper the authors present another variant of that formalism, which also gives another proof of the previous results. Let \(L\) be a Lie superalgebra and \(A\) a graded commutative algebra. In Section 2 the graded Lie-Cartan pairs \((L,A)\) and their \(E\)-connections are defined, where \(E\) is a graded unital \(A\)-module. The classical operators attached to a given \(E\)-connection are introduced in Section 3; their property of preserving graded alternation, their ``locality properties'' for a local connection, and the classical identities which they fulfil are deduced. In Section 4 the particular case \(E=A\) is studied. It turns out that the sets \(\Lambda^*(L,A)\) of graded alternate forms are graded commutative bigraded differential algebras and the classical operators are graded derivatives of those algebras. In Section 5, for general \(E\)-valued case, the module-derivation properties of the \(\Lambda^*(L,A)\)-valued classical operators are reduced to the derivation properties of the \(\Lambda^*(L,A)\)-valued ones. With the help of these, the identities between classical operators are proved.