Nonholonomic Riemann and Weyl tensors for flag manifolds

DOI10.1007/S11232-007-0131-ZMaRDI QIDQ2480110zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 31 March 2008

Published in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0509399

Cartan prolongation flag manifold Lie algebra cohomology nonholonomic manifold Riemann tensor Tanaka-Shchepochkina prolong Weyl tensor

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Grassmannians, Schubert varieties, flag manifolds (14M15) Cohomology of Lie (super)algebras (17B56) Nonholonomic dynamical systems (37J60) (G)-structures (53C10) Supermanifolds and graded manifolds (58A50) Nonholonomic systems related to the dynamics of a system of particles (70F25) Differential geometric methods (tensors, connections, symplectic, Poisson, contact, Riemannian, nonholonomic, etc.) for problems in mechanics (70G45)

Abstract: On any manifold, any non-degenerate symmetric 2-form (metric) and any skew-symmetric (differential) form W can be reduced to a canonical form at any point, but not in any neighborhood: the respective obstructions being the Riemannian tensor and dW. The obstructions to flatness (to reducibility to a canonical form) are well-known for any G-structure, not only for Riemannian or symplectic structures. For the manifold with a nonholonomic structure (nonintegrable distribution), the general notions of flatness and obstructions to it, though of huge interest (e.g., in supergravity) were not known until recently, though particular cases were known for more than a century (e.g., any contact structure is ``flat: it can always be reduced, locally, to a canonical form). We give a general definition of the NONHOLONOMIC analogs of the Riemann and Weyl tensors. With the help of Premet's theorems and a package SuperLie we calculate these tensors for the particular case of flag varieties associated with each maximal (and several other) parabolic subalgebra of each simple Lie algebra. We also compute obstructions to flatness of the G(2)-structure and its nonholonomic super counterpart.

Review text

A manifold is said to be nonholonomic if it is endowed with a nonintegrable distribution. Nonholonomic geometry has been studied extensively over the past century with a recent growth in potential applications. The authors are interested in the computation of nonholonomic analogues of the Riemann and Weyl tensors. For a complex manifold \(M\) and complex Lie group \(G\), the Riemann and Weyl tensors can be interpreted as certain structure functions related to a \(G\)-structure on \(M\), and further related to cohomology of the Lie algebra of \(G\). The authors discuss the development of the nonholonomic analogues and give the definitions in terms of Lie algebra cohomology. The authors present some general Lie algebra cohomology results of A. Premet which allow one to reduce the necessary computations to potentially simpler ones. The authors then focus on the special case of a flag manifold associated to a simple Lie algebra and a maximal parabolic subalgebra. Explicit cohomology computations are made for all complex simple Lie algebras with the aid of the computer package SuperLie. Lastly the authors consider the exceptional simple Lie group of type \(G_2\) and compute the obstructions to flatness of a \(G_2\)-structure on a manifold and its nonholonomic superanalogue.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(7)

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

SuperLie

This page was built for publication: Nonholonomic Riemann and Weyl tensors for flag manifolds

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2480110)