Symmetries of the space of linear symplectic connections

DOI10.3842/SIGMA.2017.002MaRDI QIDQ505961zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Daniel J. F. Fox

Publication date 27 January 2017

Published in SIGMA. Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07739

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zbMATH Keywords

critical symplectic connections preferred symplectic connections symplectic connections symplectic geometry

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Lie algebras and Lie superalgebras (17B99) Connections (general theory) (53C05) Symplectic manifolds (general theory) (53D05) Momentum maps; symplectic reduction (53D20) Canonical and symplectic transformations for problems in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics (70H15)

Abstract: There is constructed a family of Lie algebras that act in a Hamiltonian way on the symplectic affine space of linear symplectic connections on a symplectic manifold. The associated equivariant moment map is a formal sum of the Cahen-Gutt moment map, the Ricci tensor, and a translational term. The critical points of a functional constructed from it interpolate between the equations for preferred symplectic connections and the equations for critical symplectic connections. The commutative algebra of formal sums of symmetric tensors on a symplectic manifold carries a pair of compatible Poisson structures, one induced from the canonical Poisson bracket on the space of functions on the cotangent bundle polynomial in the fibers, and the other induced from the algebraic fiberwise Schouten bracket on the symmetric algebra of each fiber of the cotangent bundle. These structures are shown to be compatible, and the required Lie algebras are constructed as central extensions of their linear combinations restricted to formal sums of symmetric tensors whose first order term is a multiple of the differential of its zeroth order term.

Review text

The paper is an extensive analysis of the space of symplectic connections on a symplectic manifold \(M\), meaning torsion-free linear connections preserving the symplectic form. The aim is to find some ``interesting classes of symplectic connections, that the author proposes, mimicking the case of linear Riemannian connections, as zeroes or critical points of some functionals that behaves nicely with respect to the group of automorphisms of \(M\). The outcome are the so-called \textit{preferred} and \textit{critical} symplectic connections. The focus is on the study of Hamiltonian actions of particular Lie algebras of tensors over \(M\) on the space of symplectic connections; the corresponding moment maps are used to study critical connections. The paper, though rather technical in its nature, is essentially self-contained. In Section 2, all necessary background is declared and the notation is settled. Section 3 contains a study of the space of symmetric tensors over a symplectic manifold, and in particular on the Lie algebra structures on it that are used in the following sections. In Section 4, the preferred and critical symplectic connections are defined and characterized, using as central tool the \textit{Cahen-Gutt moment map}. Sections 5 and 6 are devoted to actions of the Lie algebras introduced on the space of symplectic connections. The paper is rather dense and contains a lot of material, however there is little need to refer to other sources, since all notions and almost all results used are clearly stated. This makes the paper a valuable reading both for experts and for zealous non-experts.

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