Coherent tangent bundles and Gauss-Bonnet formulas for wave fronts (Q692145)

A coherent tangent bundle over an oriented \(m\)-manifold \(M^m\) is introduced as a 5-tuple; a vector bundle \(\mathcal E\) of rank \(m\) over \(M^m\) with an inner product \(\langle\) , \(\rangle\) together with metric connection and a bundle homomorphism of the tangent bundle \(TM^m\) into \(\mathcal E\). This is a generalization of Riemannian manifold and intrinsic formulation of wave fronts. The first fundamental forms and the third fundamental forms are considered as induced metrics of certain homomorphisms between vector bundles. They satisfy exactly the same conditions as wave fronts in space forms, so they can reverse roles with each other. Then the two Gauss-Bonnet formulas induce two more (different than the previous ones) Gauss-Bonnet formulas by exchanging the first and the third fundamental forms. Using these formulas the authors get several results on the topology and geometry of wave fronts. They introduce the singular curvature, give a new proof of Quine's formula and get a new formula for the total singular curvature of generic smooth maps between 2-manifolds.