Symplectic Yang-Mills theory, Ricci tensor, and connections (Q2641917)

In the paper the authors study symplectic connections with torsion on an (almost) symplectic manifold \((M,\omega)\). They introduce the symplectic Ricci tensor sRic, which coincides with the Ricci tensor for any torsion-free symplectic connection \(\nabla\). Let \(E\) be a real vector bundle over \((M,\omega)\) and \( b\) be an almost symplectic structure on \(E\), i.e., \(b\in\Gamma (\wedge^2E)\). Then \(b\) defines a pairing in \(\Omega^k (M,\operatorname{End} E)\) and \(\Gamma(\operatorname{End} E)\) and a symplectic Hodge operator \(*:\Omega(M,\operatorname{End} E)\rightarrow \Omega(M,\operatorname{End} E)\) such that \(b(\alpha,\beta) \omega^{(n)}= b(\alpha\wedge*\beta)\). The authors investigate the functionals \(I_1(\nabla)= \frac12\int_M b(R^{\nabla},R^{\nabla}) \omega^{(n)}\) and \(I_2(\nabla)= \int_M b(\text{sRic}^{\nabla}, \text{sRic}^{\nabla})\omega^{(n)}\). It appears that if \(\omega\) is symplectic then \(I_1,I_2\) differ by a constant. A connection \(\nabla\) symplectic with respect to \(b\) is a critical point of the functional \(I_1\) if and only if \(d^{\nabla}*R^{\nabla}=0\). In case \(\omega\) is symplectic \(\nabla\) is a critical point of the functional \(I_2\) if and only if \(\nabla \text{sRic}^{\nabla}=0\).