G2 manifold

In differential geometry, a G2 manifold is a seven-dimensional Riemannian manifold with holonomy group contained in G2. The group is one of the five exceptional simple Lie groups. It can be described as the automorphism group of the octonions, or equivalently, as a proper subgroup of special orthogonal group SO(7) that preserves a spinor in the eight-dimensional spinor representation or lastly as the subgroup of the general linear group GL(7) which preserves the non-degenerate 3-form , the associative form. The Hodge dual, is then a parallel 4-form, the coassociative form. These forms are calibrations in the sense of Harvey–Lawson,[1] and thus define special classes of 3- and 4-dimensional submanifolds.

Properties

If M is a -manifold, then M is:

History

A manifold with holonomy was first introduced by Edmond Bonan in 1966, who constructed the parallel 3-form, the parallel 4-form and showed that this manifold was Ricci-flat.[2] The first complete, but noncompact 7-manifolds with holonomy were constructed by Robert Bryant and Salamon in 1989.[3] The first compact 7-manifolds with holonomy were constructed by Dominic Joyce in 1994, and compact manifolds are sometimes known as "Joyce manifolds", especially in the physics literature.[4] In 2013, it was shown by M. Firat Arikan, Hyunjoo Cho, and Sema Salur that any manifold with a spin structure, and, hence, a -structure, admits a compatible almost contact metric structure, and an explicit compatible almost contact structure was constructed for manifolds with -structure.[5] In the same paper, it was shown that certain classes of -manifolds admit a contact structure.

Connections to physics

These manifolds are important in string theory. They break the original supersymmetry to 1/8 of the original amount. For example, M-theory compactified on a manifold leads to a realistic four-dimensional (11-7=4) theory with N=1 supersymmetry. The resulting low energy effective supergravity contains a single supergravity supermultiplet, a number of chiral supermultiplets equal to the third Betti number of the manifold and a number of U(1) vector supermultiplets equal to the second Betti number.

See also

References

  1. Harvey, R.; Lawson, H.B. (1982), "Calibrated geometries", Acta Mathematica, 148: 47157, doi:10.1007/BF02392726.
  2. E. Bonan, (1966), "Sur les variétés riemanniennes à groupe d'holonomie G2 ou Spin(7)", C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, 262: 127129.
  3. Bryant, R.L.; Salamon, S.M. (1989), "On the construction of some complete metrics with exceptional holonomy", Duke Mathematical Journal, 58: 829850, doi:10.1215/s0012-7094-89-05839-0.
  4. Joyce, D.D. (2000), Compact Manifolds with Special Holonomy, Oxford Mathematical Monographs, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-850601-5.
  5. Arikan, M. Firat; Cho, Hyunjoo; Salur, Sema (2013), "Existence of compatible contact structures on -manifolds", Asian J. Math, International Press of Boston, 17 (2): 321334, doi:10.4310/AJM.2013.v17.n2.a3.
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