Central Extensions of Lie Groups Preserving a Differential Form

Abstract

Abstract Let $M$ be a manifold with a closed, integral $(k+1)$-form $\omega $, and let $G$ be a Fréchet–Lie group acting on $(M,\omega )$. As a generalization of the Kostant–Souriau extension for symplectic manifolds, we consider a canonical class of central extensions of ${\mathfrak{g}}$ by ${\mathbb{R}}$, indexed by $H^{k-1}(M,{\mathbb{R}})^*$. We show that the image of $H_{k-1}(M,{\mathbb{Z}})$ in $H^{k-1}(M,{\mathbb{R}})^*$ corresponds to a lattice of Lie algebra extensions that integrate to smooth central extensions of $G$ by the circle group ${\mathbb{T}}$. The idea is to represent a class in $H_{k-1}(M,{\mathbb{Z}})$ by a weighted submanifold $(S,\beta )$, where $\beta $ is a closed, integral form on $S$. We use transgression of differential characters from $ S$ and $ M $ to the mapping space $ C^\infty (S, M) $ and apply the Kostant–Souriau construction on $ C^\infty (S, M) $.