A note on Chern-Weil classes of Cartan connections

Abstract

We present a construction of Chern-Weil characteristic classes for pairs Cartan geometries sharing the same underlying data. Given any model Cartan geometry $(Q,\omega)$ with underlying data $(G,V)$ and a second Cartan geometry $(P,\theta)$ with the same underlying data, we define a subalgebra of polynomials on the Atiyah algebroid of $Q$ together with a characteristic map that recovers the classical Chern-Weil map of a Cartan connection when $(Q,\omega)$ arises from a Klein pair modeling $(P,\theta)$.