Holonomy of Poisson manifolds and the modular class (Q5935810)

This paper adds some interesting new concepts and results to the theory of Poisson manifolds. The main new concept is that of linear Poisson holonomy along a cotangent loop \(\alpha\). If \(\alpha\) is a closed curve in the cotangent bundle \(T^*P\) of a Poisson manifold \((P,\pi)\), with projection \(\gamma\) (into \(P\)), \(\alpha\) is said to be a cotangent loop if \(\pi^\sharp(\alpha)=\dot{\gamma}\). Considering the leaf \(F_{\gamma(0)}\) of the symplectic foliation and the normal space \(N_{\gamma(0)}\) (which carries a canonical linear Poisson structure), the linear Poisson holonomy along \(\alpha\) is a linear map \(h(\alpha): N_{\gamma(0)}\rightarrow N_{\gamma(0)}\), which is constructed starting from a family of closed 1-forms \(\widetilde{\alpha}_t\) such that \(\widetilde{\alpha}_t(\gamma(t))=\alpha(t)\). It is a Poisson map. For singular Poisson structures, this linear holonomy is not homotopy invariant in the standard sense, but it is shown that it induces a homotopy invariant element in the group of outer automorphisms of the normal space of the leaf. A further result of interest is the link between linear holonomy and the modular class. It is known that, for a given volume form \(\mu\) on \(P\), there exists a unique ``modular vector field'' \(v_\mu\), such that for every function \(f\) on \(P\): \(\text{div}_\mu X_f= - {\mathcal L}_{v_\mu}f\). The class of \(v_\mu\) in the first cohomology of \(P\) is called the modular class of \(P\). The authors show that: \(\det h(\alpha)= \exp (\int_\alpha \pmod P)\). In the second part of the paper, the authors explain the concept of Morita equivalence of Poisson manifolds, as introduced by Xu. They prove that the modular class is an invariant of Morita equivalence of locally unimodular manifolds (i.e.\ manifolds which locally admit a volume form conserved by Hamiltonian flows).