Classification of first order sesquilinear forms

Abstract

A natural way to obtain a system of partial differential equations on a manifold is to vary a suitably defined sesquilinear form. The sesquilinear forms we study are Hermitian forms acting on sections of the trivial n-bundle over a smooth m-dimensional manifold without boundary. More specifically, we are concerned with first order sesquilinear forms, namely, those generating first order systems. Our goal is to classify such forms up to GL(n, ) gauge equivalence. We achieve this classification in the special case of m = 4 and n = 2 by means of geometric and topological invariants (e.g., Lorentzian metric, spin/spinc structure, electromagnetic covector potential) naturally contained within the sesquilinear form - a purely analytic object. Essential to our approach is the interplay of techniques from analysis, geometry, and topology.