The classification of general affine connections in Newton--Cartan geometry: Towards metric-affine Newton--Cartan gravity

Abstract

We give a full classification of general affine connections on Galilei manifolds in terms of independently specifiable tensor fields. This generalises the well-known case of (torsional) Galilei connections, i.e. connections compatible with the metric structure of the Galilei manifold. Similarly to the well-known pseudo-Riemannian case, the additional freedom for connections that are not metric-compatible lies in the covariant derivatives of the two tensors defining the metric structure (the clock form and the space metric), which however are not fully independent of each other.