Related papers: Standard Tractors and the Conformal Ambient Metric…
The (Fefferman-Graham) ambient obstruction tensor is a conformally invariant symmetric trace-free 2-tensor on even-dimensional Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. The conformal deformation complex is a differential complex related…
We give a new normalization condition for connections on sub-Riemannian manifolds with constant symbols. The condition is formulated in terms of Cartan connections and depends only on the first degree of homogeneity of the curvature. The…
We prove that Fefferman spaces, associated to non--degenerate CR structures of hypersurface type, are characterised, up to local conformal isometry, by the existence of a parallel orthogonal complex structure on the standard tractor bundle.…
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…
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.
We establish a one-to-one correspondence between K\"ahler metrics in a given conformal class and parallel sections of a certain vector bundle with conformally invariant connection, where the parallel sections satisfy a set of non--linear…
We treat a non-normal Fefferman-type construction based on an inclusion $\SL(n+1)\embed\Spin(n+1,n+1)$. The construction associates a split signature $(n,n)$-conformal spin structure to a projective structure of dimension $n$. For $n\geq 3$…
This paper provides details of the construction, properties and some applications of the ambient metric associated to a conformal class of metrics on a smooth manifold. Existence and uniqueness of formal expansions defining such metrics are…
We look at several problems in even dimensional conformal geometry based around the de Rham complex. A leading and motivating problem is to find a conformally invariant replacement for the usual de Rham harmonics. An obviously related…
Given a generic 2-plane field on a 5-dimensional manifold we consider its (3,2)-signature conformal metric [g] as defined in math.DG/0406400. Every conformal class [g] obtained in this way has very special conformal holonomy: it must be…
A contact projective structure is a contact path geometry the paths of which are among the geodesics of some affine connection. In the manner of T.Y. Thomas there is associated to each contact projective structure an ambient affine…
On conformal manifolds of even dimension $n\geq 4$ we construct a family of new conformally invariant differential complexes. Each bundle in each of these complexes appears either in the de Rham complex or in its dual. Each of the new…
We present a generalisation of the embedding space formalism to conformal field theories (CFTs) on non-trivial states and curved backgrounds, based on the ambient metric of Fefferman and Graham. The ambient metric is a Lorentzian Ricci-flat…
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…
This article contributes to the relative BGG-machinery for parabolic geometries. Starting from a relative tractor bundle, this machinery constructs a sequence of differential operators that are naturally associated to the geometry in…
For a conformal manifold, we describe a new relation between the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman and Graham and the holonomy of the normal conformal Cartan connection. This relation allows us to prove several results on the…
The goal of this paper is to express the Bach tensor of a four dimensional conformal geometry of an arbitrary signature by the Cartan normal conformal (CNC) connection. We show that the Bach tensor can be identified with the Yang-Mills…
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…
How to include spacetime translations in fibre bundle gauge theories has been a subject of controversy, because spacetime symmetries are not internal symmetries of the bundle structure group. The standard method for including affine…
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…