A Tensor Formalism for Exceptional Geometry

Abstract

Toroidal compactification of M-theory and its low energy limit, eleven-dimensional supergravity, possess hidden symmetries giving fields additional degrees of freedom. By extending the space-time to accomodate these extra degrees of freedom and constructing a generalised geometry on this space, the U-duality symmetry can be made manifest. The local diffeomorphism invariance is replaced by the larger exceptional groups which also happens to include gauge transformations. In this thesis, a tensor calculus for the exceptional generalised geometry is constructed. The geometrical concepts of diffeomorphisms, torsion, curvature, reducibility, tensors and tensor fields are given a generalised, covariant construction in the toroidally compactified, enhanced space-directions.