Invariants of stably trivial vector bundles with connection

Abstract

We define a Chern--Simons invariant of connections on stably trivial vector bundles over smooth manifolds, taking values in $3$-forms modulo closed forms with integral cohomology class. We show an additivity property of this invariant for connections defined on a direct sum of bundles, under a certain block-diagonality condition on the curvature. As a corollary, we deduce an obstruction for conformally immersing a $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold in a translation manifold of dimension $n+1$.