No label defined (Q4028545)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0746.00080.] The decomposition of a vector space of some class of particular covariant tensors under the action of some group has, as is well-known, been used at several places and has proven to be very useful in differential geometry. We notice, for example, the decomposition of several spaces of algebraic curvature tensors under the action of \(GL(n,\mathbb{R})\), \(O(n)\), \(SO(n)\), \(U(n)\), \(Sp(n)\cdot Sp(1)\), \(U(n)\times 1\); the decomposition of spaces of tensors which satisfy the same identities as the covariant derivatives of curvature tensors or Kähler forms; the decomposition of the torsion tensors of canonical connections on homogeneous spaces; etc. These decompositions lead in many cases to natural characterizations of particular classes of manifolds and to interesting applications in local and global geometry. In this paper the author undertakes the task to describe several of these cases and to illustrate the usefulness by giving a selection of results. This survey also includes a long but not exhaustive list of references.