Constraint vector bundles and reduction of Lie (bi-)algebroids

Abstract

We present a framework for the reduction of various geometric structures extending the classical coisotropic Poisson reduction. For this we introduce constraint manifolds and constraint vector bundles. A constraint Serre-Swan theorem is proven, identifying constraint vector bundles with certain finitely generated projective modules, and a Cartan calculus for constraint differentiable forms and multivector fields is introduced. All of these constructions will be shown to be compatible with reduction. Finally, we apply this to obtain a reduction procedure for Lie (bi-)algebroids and Dirac manifolds.