Dimensional curvature identities on pseudo-Riemannian geometry

Abstract

The curvature tensor of a pseudo-Riemannian metric, and its covariant derivatives, satisfy certain identities that hold on any manifold of dimension less or equal than $n$. In this paper, we re-elaborate recent results by Gilkey-Park-Sekigawa regarding $p$-covariant dimensional curvature identities, for $p=0,2$. To this end, we use the classical theory of natural operations, that allows us to simplify some arguments and to generalize the description of Gilkey-Park-Sekigawa. Thus, our main result describes the first space of $p$-covariant dimensional curvature identities, for any even $p$.