English

Octonion-valued forms and the canonical 8-form on Riemannian manifolds with a $Spin(9)$-structure

Representation Theory 2019-06-12 v2 Differential Geometry

Abstract

It is well known that there is a unique Spin(9)Spin(9)-invariant 8-form on the octonionic plane that naturally yields a canonical differential 8-form on any Riemannian manifold with a weak Spin(9)Spin(9)-structure. Over the decades, this invariant has been studied extensively and described in several equivalent ways. In the present article, a new explicit algebraic formula for the Spin(9)Spin(9)-invariant 8-form is given. The approach we use generalizes the standard expression of the K\"{a}hler 2-form. Namely, the invariant 8-form is constructed only from the two octonion-valued coordinate 1-forms on the octonionic plane. For completeness, analogous expressions for the Kraines form, the Cayley calibration and the associative calibration are also presented.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.02452,
  title  = {Octonion-valued forms and the canonical 8-form on Riemannian manifolds with a $Spin(9)$-structure},
  author = {Jan Kotrbatý},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.02452},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

18 pages, minor language corrections