Natural differential operations on manifolds: an algebraic approach

Natural algebraic differential operations on geometric quantities on smooth manifolds are considered. A method for the investigation and classification of such operations is described, the method of IT-reduction. With it the investigation of natural operations reduces to the analysis of rational maps between k-jet spaces, which are equivariant with respect to certain algebraic groups. On the basis of the method of IT-reduction a finite generation theorem is proved: for tensor bundles V,W→M all the natural differential operations D:Γ(V)→Γ(W) of degree at most d can be algebraically constructed from some finite set of such operations. Conceptual proofs of known results on the classification of natural linear operations on arbitrary and symplectic manifolds are presented. A non-existence theorem is proved for natural deformation quantizations on Poisson manifolds and symplectic manifolds. Bibliography: 21 titles.