Principal Bundles, Vector Bundles and Connections
Appendix A Principal Bundles, Vector Bundles and Connections Abstract The appendix defines fiber bundles, principal bundles and their associate vector bundles, recall the definitions of frame bundles, the orthonormal frame bun- dle, jet bundles, product bundles and the Whitney sums of bundles. Next, equivalent definitions of connections in principal bundles and in their associate vector bundles are presented and it is shown how these concepts are related to the concept of a covariant derivative in the base manifold of the bundle. Also, the concept of exterior covariant derivatives (crucial for the formulation of gauge theories) and the meaning of a curvature and torsion of a linear connection in a manifold is recalled. The concept of covariant derivative in vector bundles is also analyzed in details in a way which, in particular, is necessary for the presentation of the theory in Chap. 12. Propositions are in general presented without proofs, which can be found, e.g., in Choquet-Bruhat et al. (Analysis, Manifolds and Physics. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1982), Frankel (The Geometry of Physics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), Kobayashi and Nomizu (Foundations of Differential Geometry. Interscience Publishers, New York, 1963), Naber (Topology, Geometry and Gauge Fields. Interactions. Applied Mathematical Sciences. Springer, New York, 2000), Nash and Sen (Topology and Geometry for Physicists. Academic, London, 1983), Nicolescu (Notes on Seiberg-Witten Theory. Graduate Studies in Mathematics. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2000), Osborn (Vector Bundles. Academic, New York, 1982), and Palais (The Geometrization of Physics. Lecture Notes from a Course at the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 1981). A.1 Fiber Bundles Definition A.1 A fiber bundle over M with Lie group G will be denoted by E D .E; M;;G; F/.
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