Related papers: Standard Tractors and the Conformal Ambient Metric…
One of the most appealing results of metric-affine gauge theory of gravity is a close parallel between the Riemann curvature two-form and the Cartan torsion two-form: While the former is the field strength of the Lorentz-group connection…
We study the conditions under which the tangent bundle $(TM,G)$ of an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ is conformally flat, where $G$ is a general natural lifted metric of $g$. We prove that the base manifold must have constant…
An extension of the ambient metric construction of Fefferman-Graham to infinite order in even dimensions is described. The main ingredients are the introduction of "inhomogeneous ambient metrics" with asymptotic expansions involving the…
We search for Riemannian metrics whose Levi-Civita connection belongs to a given projective class. Following Sinjukov and Mikes, we show that such metrics correspond precisely to suitably positive solutions of a certain projectively…
We consider normal almost contact structures on a Riemannian manifold and, through their associated sections of an ad-hoc twistor bundle, study their harmonicity, as sections or as maps. We rewrite these harmonicity equations in terms of…
In the standard approach to Finsler geometry the metric is defined as a vertical Hessian and the Chern or Cartan connections appear as just two among many possible natural linear connections on the pullback tangent bundle. Here it is shown…
We give a geometric derivation of Branson's Q-curvature in terms of the ambient metric associated with conformal structures; it naturally follows from the ambient metric construction of conformally invariant operators and can be applied to…
This is the second in a series of papers where we prove a conjecture of Deser and Schwimmer regarding the algebraic structure of ``global conformal invariants''; these are defined to be conformally invariant integrals of geometric scalars.…
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…
We introduce a Fefferman-type construction that associates an almost Grassmannian structure of type $(2,n+1)$ to every $(n+1)$-dimensional path geometry. We prove that the construction is normal and provide two equivalent characterizing…
We study conformally compact metrics satisfying the Lovelock equations, which generalize the Einstein equation. We show that these metrics admit polyhomogeneous expansions, thereby naturally realizing the Fefferman-Graham expansion, which…
In this article we introduce local gauge conditions under which many curvature tensors appearing in conformal geometry, such as the Weyl, Cotton, Bach, and Fefferman-Graham obstruction tensors, become elliptic operators. The gauge…
Given any two Einstein (pseudo-)metrics, with scalar curvatures suitably related, we give an explicit construction of a Poincar\'e-Einstein (pseudo-)metric with conformal infinity the conformal class of the product of the initial metrics.…
We study the standard tractor bundle and the standard cotractor bundle of an almost Grassmann structure: We provide explicit formulae for their splitting operators, first BGG operators as well as prolongation connections. We characterize…
We present a number of conditions which are necessary for an n-dimensional projective structure (M,[nabla]) to include the Levi-Civita connection nabla of some metric on M. We provide an algorithm, which effectively checks if a Levi-Civita…
We introduce a generalisation of Fefferman's conformal circle bundle over a contact Cauchy-Riemann three-manifold. These can be viewed as exact `perturbations' of Fefferman's structure by a semi-basic one-form, which encodes additional data…
In his 1910 "Five Variables" paper, Cartan solved the equivalence problem for the geometry of $(2, 3, 5)$ distributions and in doing so demonstrated an intimate link between this geometry and the exceptional simple Lie groups of type…
We present a geometric construction and characterization of $2n$-dimensional split-signature conformal structures endowed with a twistor spinor with integrable kernel. The construction is regarded as a modification of the conformal…
Let $\overline{M}$ be a smooth manifold with boundary $\partial M$ and interior $M$. Consider an affine connection $\nabla$ on $M$ for which the boundary is at infinity. Then $\nabla$ is projectively compact of order $\alpha$ if the…
On a conformal manifold, it is well known that parallel sections of the standard tractor bundle with non-vanishing scale are in 1-1 correspondence with solutions of the conformal Einstein equation. In 2 dimensions conformal geometry carries…