Dirac products and concurring Dirac structures

Abstract

We discuss in this note two dual canonical operations on Dirac structures $L$ and $R$ -- the \emph{tangent product} $L \star R$ and the \emph{cotangent product} $L \circledast R$. Our first result gives an explicit description of the leaves of $L \star R$ in terms of those of $L$ and $R$, surprisingly ruling out the pathologies which plague general ``induced Dirac structures''. In contrast to the tangent product, the more novel contangent product $L \circledast R$ need not be Dirac even if smooth. When it is, we say that $L$ and $R$ \emph{concur}. Concurrence captures commuting Poison structures, refines the \emph{Dirac pairs} of Dorfman and Kosmann-Schwarzbach, and it is our proposal as the natural notion of ``compatibility'' between Dirac structures. The rest of the paper is devoted to illustrating the usefulness of tangent- and cotangent products in general, and the notion of concurrence in particular. Dirac products clarify old constructions in Poisson geometry, characterize Dirac structures which can be pushed forward by a smooth map, and mandate a version of a local normal form. Magri and Morosi's $P\Omega$-condition and Vaisman's notion of two-forms complementary to a Poisson structures are found to be instances of concurrence, as is the setting for the Frobenius-Nirenberg theorem. We conclude the paper with an interpretation in the style of Magri and Morosi of generalized complex structures which concur with their conjugates.