Born sigma-models for para-Hermitian manifolds and generalized T-duality

We give a covariant realization of the doubled sigma-model formulation of duality-symmetric string theory within the general framework of para-Hermitian geometry. We define a notion of generalized metric on a para-Hermitian manifold and discuss its relation to Born geometry. We show that a Born geometry uniquely defines a worldsheet sigma-model with a para-Hermitian target space, and we describe its Lie algebroid gauging as a means of recovering the conventional sigma-model description of a physical string background as the leaf space of a foliated para-Hermitian manifold. Applying the Kotov–Strobl gauging leads to a generalized notion of T-duality when combined with transformations that act on Born geometries. We obtain a geometric interpretation of the self-duality constraint that halves the degrees of freedom in doubled sigma-models, and we give geometric characterizations of non-geometric string backgrounds in this setting. We illustrate our formalism with detailed worldsheet descriptions of closed string phase spaces, of doubled groups where our notion of generalized T-duality includes non-abelian T-duality, and of doubled nilmanifolds.

Twistor spaces on foliated manifolds

The theory of twistors on foliated manifolds is developed. We construct the twistor space of the normal bundle of a foliation. It is demonstrated that the classical constructions of the twistor theory lead to foliated objects and permit to formulate and prove foliated versions of some well-known results on holomorphic mappings. Since any orbifold can be understood as the leaf space of a suitably defined Riemannian foliation we obtain orbifold versions of the classical results as a simple consequence of the results on foliated mappings.

Riemannian foliations with Ehresmann connection

It is shown that the structural theory of Molino for Riemannian foliations on compact manifolds and complete Riemannian manifolds may be generalized to a Riemannian foliations with Ehresmann connection. Within this generalization there are no restrictions on the codimension of the foliation and on the dimension of the foliated manifold. For a Riemannian foliation (M,F) with Ehresmann connection it is proved that the closure of any leaf forms a minimal set, the family of all such closures forms a singular Riemannian foliation (M,F¯¯¯¯). It is shown that in M there exists a connected open dense F¯¯¯¯-saturated subset M0 such that the induced foliation (M0,F¯¯¯¯|M0) is formed by fibers of a locally trivial bundle over some smooth Hausdorff manifold. The equivalence of some properties of Riemannian foliations (M,F) with Ehresmann connection is proved. In particular, it is shown that the structural Lie algebra of (M,F) is equal to zero if and only if the leaf space of (M,F) is naturally endowed with a smooth orbifold structure. Constructed examples show that for foliations with transversally linear connection and for conformal foliations the similar statements are not true in general.

New relations between G2 geometries in dimensions 5 and 7

There are two well-known parabolic split [Formula: see text] geometries in dimension 5, [Formula: see text] distributions and [Formula: see text] contact structures. Here we link these two geometries with yet another [Formula: see text] related contact structure, which lives on a [Formula: see text]-manifold. More precisely, we present a natural geometric construction that associates to a [Formula: see text] distribution a [Formula: see text]-dimensional bundle endowed with a canonical Lie contact structure. We further study the relation between the canonical normal Cartan connections associated with the two structures and we show that the Cartan holonomy of the induced Lie contact structure reduces to [Formula: see text]. This motivates the study of the curved orbit decomposition associated with a [Formula: see text] reduced Lie contact structure on a [Formula: see text]-manifold. It is shown that, provided an additional curvature condition is satisfied, in a neighborhood of each point in the open curved orbit the structure descends to a [Formula: see text] distribution on a local leaf space. The closed orbit carries an induced [Formula: see text] contact structure.

A REMARK ON THE BRYLINSKI CONJECTURE FOR ORBIFOLDS

The paper presents a proof of the Brylinski conjecture for compact Kähler orbifolds. The result is a corollary of the foliated version of the Mathieu theorem on symplectic harmonic representations of de Rham cohomology classes. The proofs are based on the idea of representing an orbifold as the leaf space of a Riemannian foliation and on the correspondence between foliated and holonomy invariant objects for foliated manifolds.