Introduces tractors for basic examples and modern differential calculus.
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Study of tractor bundles and spacelike immersions in Lorentzian manifolds.
New tractor geometry derived from asymptotically flat spacetimes.
A method constructs tractor conformal bundles for spacelike submanifolds in Lorentzian manifolds.
Study parallel tractors and cotractors on almost Grassmannian structures.
Embedding theorem for tractor bundles applied to conformal geometry.
The realization of tractor bundles as associated bundles in conformal geometry is studied. It is shown that different natural choices of principal bundle with normal Cartan connection corresponding to a given conformal manifold can give rise to topologically distinct associated tractor bundles for the same inducing rep…
CR Killing operator derived from tractor calculus for CR structures.
The aim of this paper and its sequel is to introduce and classify the holonomy algebras of the projective Tractor connection. After a brief historical background, this paper presents and analyses the projective Cartan and Tractor connections, the various structures they can preserve, and their geometric interpretations…
We generalize the notion of planar bicycle tracks -- a.k.a. one-trailer systems -- to so-called tractor/tractrix systems in general Riemannian manifolds and prove explicit expressions for the length of the ensuing tractrices and for the area of the domains that are swept out by any given tractor/tractrix system. These …
We describe an elementary algorithm for expressing, as explicit formulae in tractor calculus, the conformally invariant GJMS operators due to C.R. Graham et alia. These differential operators have leading part a power of the Laplacian. Conformal tractor calculus is the natural induced bundle calculus associated to the …
The paper studies conformal and projective structures using 2-frame bundles.
In this paper we relate the Fefferman-Graham ambient metric construction for conformal manifolds to the approach to conformal geometry via the canonical Cartan connection. We show that from any ambient metric that satisfies a weakening of the usual normalisation condition, one can construct the conformal standard tract…
We introduce the tractor formalism from conformal geometry to the study of smooth metric measure spaces. In particular, this gives rise to a correspondence between quasi-Einstein metrics and parallel sections of certain tractor bundles. We use this formulation to give a sharp upper bound on the dimension of the vector …
Characterizes conformal Killing tensors and their Killing scales.
Proposes a new variational principle for Einstein gravity.
Quantizes contact structures using dynamical methods.
The following are expanded lecture notes for the course of eight one hour lectures given by the second author at the 2014 summer school Asymptotic Analysis in General Relativity held in Grenoble by the Institut Fourier. The first four lectures deal with conformal geometry and the conformal tractor calculus, taking as p…
The article constructs differential operators for parabolic geometries.
We present the general theory of curves in conformal geometry using tractor calculus. This primarily involves a tractorial determination of distinguished parametrizations and relative and absolute conformal invariants of generic curves. The absolute conformal invariants are defined via a tractor analogue of the classic…
In this article we propose a new geometrization of the radiative phase space of asymptotically flat space-times: we show that the geometry induced on null-infinity by the presence of gravitational waves can be understood to be a generalisation of the tractor calculus of conformal manifolds adapted to the case of degene…
Defines a new energy for submanifolds, comparing to Willmore energy.
We develop the natural tractor calculi associated to conformal and CR structures as a fundamental tool for the study of Fefferman's construction of a canonical conformal class on the total space of a circle bundle over a non--degenerate CR manifold of hypersurface type. In particular we construct and treat the basic ob…
The aim of this paper is to describe the geometry of conformal structures in Lorentzian signature, which admit a lightlike conformal Killing vector field whose corresponding adjoint tractor acts as complex structure on the standard tractor bundle of conformal geometry. Key to the treatment of this problem is CR-geometr…
There is a well known one--parameter family of left invariant CR structures on . We show how purely algebraic methods can be used to explicitly compute the canonical Cartan connections associated to these structures and their curvatures. We also obtain explicit descriptions of tractor bundles and tracto…
Compact formulas for Yang-Mills conditions on conformal manifolds.
We develop a complete local theory for CR embedded submanifolds of CR manifolds in a way which parallels the Ricci calculus for Riemannian submanifold theory. In particular, we establish the subtle relationship between the submanifold and ambient standard tractor bundles, allowing us to relate the respective normal Car…
The aim of this paper and its prequel is to introduce and classify the irreducible holonomy algebras of the projective Tractor connection. This is achieved through the construction of a `projective cone', a Ricci-flat manifold one dimension higher whose affine holonomy is equal to the Tractor holonomy of the underlying…
This paper aims to classify the holonomy of the conformal Tractor connection, and relate these holonomies to the geometry of the underlying manifold. The conformally Einstein case is dealt with through the construction of metric cones, whose Riemmanian holonomy is the same as the Tractor holonomy of the underlying mani…
A Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian (or conformal) structure is conformally Einstein if and only if there is a suitably generic parallel section of a certain vector bundle -- the so-called standard conformal tractor bundle. We show that this characterisation leads to a systematic approach to constructing obstructions to …
Tractor Calculus is a powerful tool for analyzing Weyl invariance; although fundamentally linked to the Cartan connection, it may also be arrived at geometrically by viewing a conformal manifold as the space of null rays in a Lorentzian ambient space. For dimension d conformally flat manifolds we show that the (d+2)-di…
We study higher form Proca equations on Einstein manifolds with boundary data along conformal infinity. We solve these Laplace-type boundary problems formally, and to all orders, by constructing an operator which projects arbitrary forms to solutions. We also develop a product formula for solving these asymptotic probl…
Studies projective geometry and partial differential equations prolongation.
A nonstandard invariant fourth order operator acting on functions on a manifold equipped with an almost Grassmannian structure with an arbitrary trorsion is found by means of the curved translation principle. This operator can be viewed as a Grassmannian analogue of the Paneitz operator well known from conformal geomet…
Fefferman and Graham showed some time ago that four dimensional conformal geometries could be analyzed in terms of six dimensional, ambient, Riemannian geometries admitting a closed homothety. Recently it was shown how conformal geometry provides a description of physics manifestly invariant under local choices of unit…
Develops a new calculus for contact structures on manifolds.
We use the manifestly conformally invariant description of a Lorentzian conformal structure in terms of a parabolic Cartan geometry in order to introduce a superalgebra structure on the space of twistor spinors and normal conformal vector fields formulated in purely algebraic terms on parallel sections in tractor bundl…
A regular normal parabolic geometry of type on a manifold gives rise to sequences of invariant differential operators, known as the curved version of the BGG resolution. These sequences are constructed from the normal covariant derivative $\na^\om$ on the corresponding tractor bundle where $\om$ is…
Deser and Nepomechie established a relationship between masslessness and rigid conformal invariance by coupling to a background metric and demanding local Weyl invariance, a method which applies neither to massive theories nor theories which rely upon gauge invariances for masslessness. We extend this method to describ…
Establishes a connection between Kähler metrics and vector bundle sections.
Study finds conserved quantities for two types of curves on conformal sphere.
This paper studies lightlike Cartan geometries and their properties.
Using the tractor calculus to study smooth metric measure spaces, we adapt results of Gover and Nurowski to give sharp metric obstructions to the existence of quasi-Einstein metrics on suitably generic manifolds. We do this by introducing an analogue of the Weyl tractor to the setting of smooth metric measure space…
We give a differential geometric description of the Cartan (or tractor) bundle and its canonical connection in CR geometry, thus offering a direct, alternative, definition to the usual abstract approach.
For a conformal manifold we introduce the notion of an ambient connection, an affine connection on an ambient manifold of the conformal manifold, possibly with torsion, and with conditions relating it to the conformal structure. The purpose of this construction is to realise the normal conformal tractor holonomy as aff…
Conformal geodesics are distinguished curves on a conformal manifold, loosely analogous to geodesics of Riemannian geometry. One definition of them is as solutions to a third order differential equation determined by the conformal structure. There is an alternative description via the tractor calculus. In this article …
The holonomy of the ambient metrics of Nurowski's conformal structures associated to generic real-analytic 2-plane fields on 5-manifolds is investigated. It is shown that the holonomy is always contained in the split real form G_2 of the exceptional Lie group, and is equal to G_2 for an open dense set of 2-plane fields…
New tensors help determine if metrics are related to Poincaré-Einstein ones.