The mixed scalar curvature of almost-product metric-affine manifolds (Q1743231)

Let \((M,\bar{\nabla},g)\) be a metric-affine manifold, i.e., a manifold \(M\) endowed with a linear connection \(\bar{\nabla}\) and a pseudo-Riemannian metric \(g\). This paper deals with metric-affine manifolds equipped with two complementary orthogonal distributions \(\mathcal{D}\) and \(\mathcal{D}^\perp\). The authors study two Einstein-Hilbert type actions on such manifolds, considered as functionals of the contorsion tensor \(\mathcal{T}\), defined as the difference between the linear connection \(\bar{\nabla}\) and the Levi-Civita connection \(\nabla\) of \(g\), i.e., \(\mathcal{T}=\bar{\nabla}-\nabla\). For Part II, see [the authors, Result. Math. 76, No. 3, Paper No. 162, 56 p. (2021; Zbl 1482.53035)]