On the concept of a filtered bundle

We present the notion of a filtered bundle as a generalisation of a graded bundle. In particular, we weaken the necessity of the transformation laws for local coordinates to exactly respect the weight of the coordinates by allowing more general polynomial transformation laws. The key examples of such bundles include affine bundles and various jet bundles, both of which play fundamental roles in geometric mechanics and classical field theory. We also present the notion of double filtered bundles which provide natural generalisations of double vector bundles and double affine bundles. Furthermore, we show that the linearisation of a filtered bundle - which can be seen as a partial polarisation of the admissible changes of local coordinates - is well defined.Comment: 23 page

Remarks on Contact and Jacobi Geometry

We present an approach to Jacobi and contact geometry that makes many facts, presented in the literature in an overcomplicated way, much more natural and clear. The key concepts are Kirillov manifolds and linear Kirillov structures, i.e., homogeneous Poisson manifolds and, respectively, homogeneous linear Poisson manifolds. The difference with the existing literature is that the homogeneity of the Poisson structure is related to a principal ${\rm GL}(1,{\mathbb R})$-bundle structure on the manifold and not just to a vector field. This allows for working with Jacobi bundle structures on nontrivial line bundles and drastically simplifies the picture of Jacobi and contact geometry. Our results easily reduce to various basic theorems of Jacobi and contact geometry when the principal bundle structure is trivial, while giving new insights into the theory

Polarisation of Graded Bundles

We construct the full linearisation functor which takes a graded bundle of degree $k$ (a particular kind of graded manifold) and produces a $k$-fold vector bundle. We fully characterise the image of the full linearisation functor and show that we obtain a subcategory of $k$-fold vector bundles consisting of symmetric $k$-fold vector bundles equipped with a family of morphisms indexed by the symmetric group ${\mathbb S}_k$. Interestingly, for the degree 2 case this additional structure gives rise to the notion of a symplectical double vector bundle, which is the skew-symmetric analogue of a metric double vector bundle. We also discuss the related case of fully linearising $N$-manifolds, and how one can use the full linearisation functor to "superise" a graded bundle

Odd Connections on Supermanifolds: Existence and relation with Affine Connections

The notion of an odd quasi-connection on a supermanifold, which is loosely an affine connection that carries non-zero Grassmann parity, is examined. Their torsion and curvature are defined, however, in general, they are not tensors. A special class of such generalised connections, referred to as odd connections in this paper, have torsion and curvature tensors. Part of the structure is an odd involution of the tangent bundle of the supermanifold and this puts drastic restrictions on the supermanifolds that admit odd connections. In particular, they must have equal number of even and odd dimensions. Amongst other results, we show that an odd connection is defined, up to an odd tensor field of type $(1,2)$, by an affine connection and an odd endomorphism of the tangent bundle. Thus, the theory of odd connections and affine connections are not completely separate theories. As an example relevant to physics, it is shown that $N= 1$ super-Minkowski spacetime admits a natural odd connection.Comment: 17 pages including one Appendix. Parts of the exposition have been rewritte and further references added. Accepted for publication in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretica

Ab initio vibrational free energies including anharmonicity for multicomponent alloys

A density-functional-theory based approach to efficiently compute numerically exact vibrational free energies - including anharmonicity - for chemically complex multicomponent alloys is developed. It is based on a combination of thermodynamic integration and a machine-learning potential. We demonstrate the performance of the approach by computing the anharmonic free energy of the prototypical five-component VNbMoTaW refractory high entropy alloy

Tulczyjew triples and higher Poisson/Schouten structures on Lie algebroids

We show how to extend the construction of Tulczyjew triples to Lie algebroids via graded manifolds. We also provide a generalisation of triangular Lie bialgebroids as higher Poisson and Schouten structures on Lie algebroids.Comment: 28 pages. Completely rewritten and improved. Typos corrected. A version is to appear in Reports on Mathematical Physics, Vol.66, No. 2, 2010. Further minor typos correcte