The scalar and vector topological Yang-Mills symmetries determine a closed
and consistent sector of Yang-Mills supersymmetry. We provide a geometrical
construction of these symmetries, based on a horizontality condition on
reducible manifolds. This yields globally well-defined scalar and vector
topological BRST operators. These operators generate a subalgebra of maximally
supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, which is small enough to be closed off-shell
with a finite set of auxiliary fields and large enough to determine the
Yang-Mills supersymmetric theory. Poincar\'e supersymmetry is reached in the
limit of flat manifolds. The arbitrariness of the gauge functions in BRSTQFTs
is thus removed by the requirement of scalar and vector topological symmetry,
which also determines the complete supersymmetry transformations in a twisted
way. Provided additional Killing vectors exist on the manifold, an equivariant
extension of our geometrical framework is provided, and the resulting
"equivariant topological field theory" corresponds to the twist of super
Yang-Mills theory on Omega backgrounds.Comment: 50 page
