Generalized reduction and pure spinors (Q462170)

The paper under review is concerned with the reduction of Dirac structures. It is well known that such a structure is an involutive subbundle \(L\) of a Courant algebroid; as such (see [\textit{M. Gualtieri}, ``Generalized complex structures'', preprint \url{arXiv:math/0703298v2}]) a Dirac structure is completely characterized by the associated line bundle of pure spinors. The author examines the reduction process provided by \textit{H. Bursztyn} et al. [Adv. Math. 211, No. 2, 726--765 (2007; Zbl 1115.53056)], and provides an explicit descrition of the pure spinors associated with the reduced subbundle \(L_{\mathrm{red}}\) given by the procedure in [Bursztyn, loc. cit.]. The result relies on an alternative construction of \(L_{\mathrm{red}}\) given by the author. This construction depends on certain choices, but more importantly, it is shown that the pointwise non-vanishing of the spinors relies on a certain transitivity condition. The difficulty here is that most important examples do not satisfy this condition. The author deals with this problem by providing a perturbation procedure which replaces the original Dirac structure \(L\) with \(L_D\). The latter is a Dirac structure which does satisfy the transversality condition required and has the same reduction as \(L\). The author also explains to what extend this reduction procedure applies to generalized Calabi-Yau structures, and how the reduction procedure of [\textit{Y. Nitta}, J. Math. Soc. Japan 59, No. 4, 1179--1198 (2007; Zbl 1186.37064)] fits into this framework. An application to \(T\)-duality is given as well, recovering a result of \textit{G. Cavalcanti} and \textit{M. Gualtieri} [``T-duality with NS-flux and generalized complex structures'', in: CRM proceedings for the conference ``A celebration of Raoul Bott's legacy in mathematics''. Montreal, July 2008].