The General Notion of a Curvature in Catastrophe Theory Terms

Abstract

We introduce a new notion of a curvature of a superconnection, different from the one obtained by a purely algebraic analogy with the curvature of a linear connection. The naturalness of this new notion of a curvature of a superconnection comes from the study of the singularities of smooth sections of vector bundles (Catastrophe Theory). We demonstrate that the classical examples of obstructions to a local equivalence: exterior differential for two-forms, Riemannian tensor, Weil tensor, curvature of a linear connection and Nijenhuis tensor can be treated in terms of some general approach. This approach, applied to the superconnection leads to a new notion of a curvature (proposed in the paper) of a superconnection.