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The canonical generalised Levi-Civita connection and its curvature

Differential Geometry 2025-07-24 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Given a (semi-Riemannian) generalised metric G\mathcal G and a divergence operator div\mathrm{div} on an exact Courant algebroid EE, we geometrically construct a canonical generalised Levi-Civita connection DG,divD^{\mathcal G, \mathrm{div}} for these data. In this way we provide a resolution of the problem of non-uniqueness of generalised Levi-Civita connections. Since the generalised Riemann tensor of DG,divD^{\mathcal G, \mathrm{div}} is an invariant of the pair (G,div)(\mathcal G, \mathrm{div}), we no longer need to discard curvature components which depend on the choice of the generalised connection. As a main result we decompose the generalised Riemann curvature tensor of DG,divD^{\mathcal G, \mathrm{div}} in terms of classical (non-generalised) geometric data. Based on this set of master formulas we derive a comprehensive curvature tool-kit for applications in generalised geometry. This includes decompositions for the full generalised Ricci tensor, the generalised Ricci tensor, and three generalised scalar-valued curvature invariants, two of which are new.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.17604,
  title  = {The canonical generalised Levi-Civita connection and its curvature},
  author = {Vicente Cortés and Matas Mackevicius and Thomas Mohaupt and Oskar Schiller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.17604},
  year   = {2025}
}

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34 pages