scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1746403
One of the basic notions in geometry is parallel displacement and in differential geometry this is defined in terms of a connection. Thus, the following question is very important: If a manifold \(M\) admits some special connection, what is the geometrical and topological structure (local and global) of \(M\). The author addresses this question for a symmetric (torsion free) connection on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold in the form of a survey of the author's results over the last twenty years. The main tools are decompositions of the space of the curvature tensors and the naturally associated differential operators of the second order. In Section 1 basic notions are given including an introduction to affine and Weyl geometry. In the second section projective, holomorphically-projective, \(C\)-holomorphically projective and conformal transformations are studied. A survey of known results is given. The corresponding transformations groups are related to the classical groups: \(\text{GL}(m,{\mathbb R})\), \(\text{U}(m)\), \(\text{SO}(m)\) etc. The well developed representation theory of these groups is used to describe the curvature of \(M\) in Section 3. The first well known result of that kind was given by \textit{I. M. Singer} and \textit{J. A. Thorpe} [Global Analysis, Papers in Honor of K. Kodaira, 355-365 (1969; Zbl 0199.25401)]. In this section a survey of the author's results is given, where the irreducible decomposition of the curvature tensor spaces with respect to \(\text{SO}(n)\) is obtained [\textit{N. Bokan}, Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo, II. Ser. 39, 331-380 (1990; Zbl 0728.53016)]. The classical Weyl invariant theory is used to establish the irreducibility of the decomposition. These results are used as a starting point for similar studies in Hermitian and almost-contact geometry. In Section 4, characteristic classes are used to understand the topology of \(M\) in the presence of some transformation groups and symmetries of the curvature tensor. The second order differential operators of Laplace type are studied in Section 5. Using the heat equation method, the geometry and topology of isospectral manifolds are studied more systematically. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0942.00006].
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