The Coulomb gauge in non-associative gauge theory (Q6084645)

The author continues his development of rigorous mathematical nonassociative gauge theory, a theory which uses loops in place of Lie groups. His main theorem in this paper is: on a compact Riemannian manifold equipped with such a nonassociative gauge theory (the precise definition of which is too technical to be written here), small enough torsion ensures the existence of a smooth section of a bundle (related to the nonassociative gauge theory) which moves the nonassociative gauge theory into another one which has torsion still small and divergence free. The author applies this theorem to the theory of compact \(G_2\)-manifolds. The author explains how a \(G_2\)-structure can be viewed as a nonassociative gauge theory, so that his theorem tells us that small torsion ensures the existence of another \(G_2\)-structure, with the same Riemannian metric, but with torsion still small and divergence free.