In
mathematics, a principal bundle[1][2][3][4] is a mathematical object that formalizes some of the essential features of the
Cartesian product of a space with a
group. In the same way as with the Cartesian product, a principal bundle is equipped with
A projection onto . For a product space, this is just the projection onto the first factor, .
Unless it is the product space , a principal bundle lacks a preferred choice of identity cross-section; it has no preferred analog of . Likewise, there is not generally a projection onto generalizing the projection onto the second factor, that exists for the Cartesian product. They may also have a complicated
topology that prevents them from being realized as a product space even if a number of arbitrary choices are made to try to define such a structure by defining it on smaller pieces of the space.
A common example of a principal bundle is the
frame bundle of a
vector bundle, which consists of all ordered
bases of the vector space attached to each point. The group in this case, is the
general linear group, which acts on the right
in the usual way: by
changes of basis. Since there is no natural way to choose an ordered basis of a vector space, a frame bundle lacks a canonical choice of identity cross-section.
A principal -bundle, where denotes any
topological group, is a
fiber bundle together with a
continuousright action such that preserves the fibers of (i.e. if then for all ) and acts
freely and
transitively (meaning each fiber is a
G-torsor) on them in such a way that for each and , the map sending to is a homeomorphism. In particular each fiber of the bundle is homeomorphic to the group itself. Frequently, one requires the base space to be
Hausdorff and possibly
paracompact.
Since the group action preserves the fibers of and acts transitively, it follows that the
orbits of the -action are precisely these fibers and the orbit space is
homeomorphic to the base space . Because the action is free and transitive, the fibers have the structure of G-torsors. A -torsor is a space that is homeomorphic to but lacks a group structure since there is no preferred choice of an
identity element.
An equivalent definition of a principal -bundle is as a -bundle with fiber where the structure group acts on the fiber by left multiplication. Since right multiplication by on the fiber commutes with the action of the structure group, there exists an invariant notion of right multiplication by on . The fibers of then become right -torsors for this action.
The definitions above are for arbitrary topological spaces. One can also define principal -bundles in the
category of
smooth manifolds. Here is required to be a
smooth map between smooth manifolds, is required to be a
Lie group, and the corresponding action on should be smooth.
Examples
Trivial bundle and sections
Over an open ball , or , with induced coordinates , any principal -bundle is isomorphic to a trivial bundle
and a smooth section is equivalently given by a (smooth) function since
for some smooth function. For example, if , the Lie group of unitary matrices, then a section can be constructed by considering four real-valued functions
and applying them to the parameterization
This same procedure valids by taking a parameterization of a collection of matrices defining a Lie group and by considering the set of functions from a patch of the base space to and inserting them into the parameterization.
Other examples
The prototypical example of a smooth principal bundle is the
frame bundle of a smooth manifold , often denoted or . Here the fiber over a point is the set of all frames (i.e. ordered bases) for the
tangent space. The
general linear group acts freely and transitively on these frames. These fibers can be glued together in a natural way so as to obtain a principal -bundle over .
Variations on the above example include the
orthonormal frame bundle of a
Riemannian manifold. Here the frames are required to be
orthonormal with respect to the
metric. The structure group is the
orthogonal group. The example also works for bundles other than the tangent bundle; if is any vector bundle of rank over , then the bundle of frames of is a principal -bundle, sometimes denoted .
A normal (regular)
covering space is a principal bundle where the structure group
acts on the fibres of via the
monodromy action. In particular, the
universal cover of is a principal bundle over with structure group (since the universal cover is simply connected and thus is trivial).
Let be a Lie group and let be a closed subgroup (not necessarily
normal). Then is a principal -bundle over the (left)
coset space. Here the action of on is just right multiplication. The fibers are the left cosets of (in this case there is a distinguished fiber, the one containing the identity, which is naturally isomorphic to ).
Consider the projection given by . This principal -bundle is the
associated bundle of the
Möbius strip. Besides the trivial bundle, this is the only principal -bundle over .
Projective spaces provide some more interesting examples of principal bundles. Recall that the -
sphere is a two-fold covering space of
real projective space. The natural action of on gives it the structure of a principal -bundle over . Likewise, is a principal -bundle over
complex projective space and is a principal -bundle over
quaternionic projective space. We then have a series of principal bundles for each positive :
Here denotes the unit sphere in (equipped with the Euclidean metric). For all of these examples the cases give the so-called
Hopf bundles.
Basic properties
Trivializations and cross sections
One of the most important questions regarding any fiber bundle is whether or not it is
trivial, i.e. isomorphic to a product bundle. For principal bundles there is a convenient characterization of triviality:
Proposition. A principal bundle is trivial if and only if it admits a global
section.
The same is not true for other fiber bundles. For instance,
vector bundles always have a zero section whether they are trivial or not and
sphere bundles may admit many global sections without being trivial.
The same fact applies to local trivializations of principal bundles. Let π : P → X be a principal G-bundle. An
open setU in X admits a local trivialization if and only if there exists a local section on U. Given a local trivialization
one can define an associated local section
where e is the
identity in G. Conversely, given a section s one defines a trivialization Φ by
The simple transitivity of the G action on the fibers of P guarantees that this map is a
bijection, it is also a
homeomorphism. The local trivializations defined by local sections are G-
equivariant in the following sense. If we write
in the form
then the map
satisfies
Equivariant trivializations therefore preserve the G-torsor structure of the fibers. In terms of the associated local section s the map φ is given by
The local version of the cross section theorem then states that the equivariant local trivializations of a principal bundle are in one-to-one correspondence with local sections.
Given an equivariant local trivialization ({Ui}, {Φi}) of P, we have local sections si on each Ui. On overlaps these must be related by the action of the structure group G. In fact, the relationship is provided by the
transition functions
By gluing the local trivializations together using these transition functions, one may reconstruct the original principal bundle. This is an example of the
fiber bundle construction theorem.
For any x ∈ Ui ∩ Uj we have
Characterization of smooth principal bundles
If is a smooth principal -bundle then acts freely and
properly on so that the orbit space is
diffeomorphic to the base space . It turns out that these properties completely characterize smooth principal bundles. That is, if is a smooth manifold, a Lie group and a smooth, free, and proper right action then
is a smooth manifold,
the natural projection is a smooth
submersion, and
Given a subgroup H of G one may consider the bundle whose fibers are homeomorphic to the
coset space. If the new bundle admits a global section, then one says that the section is a reduction of the structure group from to . The reason for this name is that the (fiberwise) inverse image of the values of this section form a subbundle of that is a principal -bundle. If is the identity, then a section of itself is a reduction of the structure group to the identity. Reductions of the structure group do not in general exist.
Many topological questions about the structure of a manifold or the structure of bundles over it that are associated to a principal -bundle may be rephrased as questions about the admissibility of the reduction of the structure group (from to ). For example:
A -dimensional real manifold admits an
almost-complex structure if the
frame bundle on the manifold, whose fibers are , can be reduced to the group .
An -dimensional real manifold admits a -plane field if the frame bundle can be reduced to the structure group .
A manifold has
spin structure if and only if its frame bundle can be further reduced from to the
Spin group, which maps to as a double cover.
Also note: an -dimensional manifold admits vector fields that are linearly independent at each point if and only if its
frame bundle admits a global section. In this case, the manifold is called
parallelizable.
If is a principal -bundle and is a
linear representation of , then one can construct a vector bundle with fibre , as the quotient of the product × by the diagonal action of . This is a special case of the
associated bundle construction, and is called an
associated vector bundle to . If the representation of on is
faithful, so that is a subgroup of the general linear group GL(), then is a -bundle and provides a reduction of structure group of the frame bundle of from to . This is the sense in which principal bundles provide an abstract formulation of the theory of frame bundles.
Any topological group G admits a classifying spaceBG: the quotient by the action of G of some
weakly contractible space, e.g., a topological space with vanishing
homotopy groups. The classifying space has the property that any G principal bundle over a
paracompact manifold B is isomorphic to a
pullback of the principal bundle EG → BG.[5] In fact, more is true, as the set of isomorphism classes of principal G bundles over the base B identifies with the set of homotopy classes of maps B → BG.
^Stasheff, James D. (1971), "H-spaces and classifying spaces: foundations and recent developments", Algebraic topology (Proc. Sympos. Pure Math., Vol. XXII, Univ. Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., 1970), Providence, R.I.:
American Mathematical Society, pp. 247–272, Theorem 2