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For every codimension two spacelike submanifold of a Lorentz manifold and each choice of a normal lightlike vector field, we introduce a canonical way to construct a tractor conformal bundle. We characterize when the induced connection of a…
The chains studied in this paper generalize Chern-Moser chains for CR structures. They form a distinguished family of one dimensional submanifolds in manifolds endowed with a parabolic contact structure. Both the parabolic contact structure…
We survey known results on the canonical bundle formula and its applications in algebraic geometry.
We study conformal tractor bundles from an extrinsic viewpoint, relating them to codimension two spacelike immersions into Lorentzian manifolds. We show that, at least locally, every Riemannian conformal structure admits a natural…
Let $p$ be a Lie subalgebra of a semisimple Lie algebra $g$ and $(G,P)$ be the corresponding pair of connected Lie groups. A Cartan geometry of type $(G,P)$ associates to a smooth manifold $M$ a principal $P$-bundle and a Cartan connection,…
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…
We review the concept of a graded bundle, which is a generalisation of a vector bundle, its linearisation, and a double structure of this kind. We then present applications of these structures in geometric mechanics including systems with…
We express the first jet bundle of curves in Euclidean space as homogeneous spaces associated to a Galilean-type group. Certain Cartan connections on a manifold with values in the Lie algebra of the Galilean group are characterized as…
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 describe invariant principal and Cartan connections on homogeneous principal bundles and show how to calculate the curvature and the holonomy; in the case of an invariant Cartan connection we give a formula for the infinitesimal…
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 describe an explicit open book decomposition adapted to the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a compact surface.
We describe a complete system of invariants for 4-dimensional CR manifolds of CR dimension 1 and codimension 2 with Engel CR distribution by constructing an explicit canonical Cartan connection. We also investigate the relation between the…
We develop a coarse notion of bundle and use it to understand the coarse geometry of group extensions and, more generally, groups acting on proper metric spaces. The results are particularly sharp for groups acting on (locally finite) trees…
This paper analyses non-regular $|2|$-graded geometries, and show that they share many of the properties of regular geometries -- the existence of a unique normal Cartan connection encoding the structure, the harmonic curvature as…
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 Courant bracket defined originally on the sections of the vector bundle $TM \oplus T^*M \to M$ is extended to the direct sum of the 1-jet vector bundle and its dual. The extended bracket allows to interpret many structures encountered…
In this note we make use of some properties of vector fields on a manifold to give an alternate proof to [3] for the equivalence between connections and parallel transport on vector bundles over manifolds. Out of the proof will emerge a new…
We study the equivalence problem for CR-manifolds belonging to general class III_2, i.e. the 5-dimensional CR-manifolds of CR-dimension 1 and codimension 3 whose CR-bundle satisfies a certain degeneracy condition. For such a CR-manifold M,…
With the intent of laying the groundwork for a program that aims at explicitly describing the space of Cartan (i.e. multiplicative) connections on a general proper Lie groupoid, we begin to investigate the space of such connections in the…