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Published February 22, 1996 | public
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A Symmetric Product for Vector Fields and its Geometric Meaning

Abstract

We introduce the notion of geodesic invariance for distributions on manifolds with a linear connection. This is a natural weakening of the concept of a totally geodesic foliation to allow distributions which are not necessarily integrable. To test a distribution for geodesic invariance, we introduce a symmetric, vector field valued product on the set of vector fields on a manifold with a linear connection. This product serves the same purpose for geodesically invariant distributions as the Lie bracket serves for integrable distributions. The relationship of this product with connections in the bundle of linear frames is also discussed. As an application, we investigate geodesically invariant distributions associated with a left-invariant affine connection on a Lie group.

Additional Information

Submitted to Mathematische Zeitschrift. The author would like to thank Francesco Bullo for many helpful discussions concerning the material in Section 5. This research was financially supported in part by NSF Grant CMS-9502224.

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Created:
August 20, 2023
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