Flat $\mathfrak{so}(p,q)$-Connections for Manifolds of Non-Euclidean Signature

Abstract

The well-known fact that $S^1$, $S^3$ and $S^7$ are parallelizable manifolds admitting flat connections is revisited. The role of torsion in the construction of those flat connections is made explicit, and the possibilities allowed by different metric signatures are examined. A necessary condition for parallelizability in an open region is that the torsion tensor must be covariantly constant. This property can be used to obtain a relation between a torsion-free and flat connections. Our treatment covers Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian (non-Euclidean signature) hyperbolic manifolds of dimensions three and seven. Apart from the spherical cases mentioned above, the explicit flat $\mathfrak{so}(p,q)$ connections with $p+q=3,7$ are constructed for the coset manifolds $SO(p,q+1)/SO(p,q)$ or $SO(p+1,q)/SO(p,q)$.