Reductive G-structures and Lie derivatives

Reductive G-structures on a principal bundle Q are considered. It is shown that these structures, i.e. reductive G-subbundles P of Q, admit a canonical decomposition of the pull-back vector bundle i*(p) (TQ) equivalent to P x (Q) TQ over P. For classical G-structures, i.e. reductive G-subbundles of the linear frame bundle, such a decomposition defines an infinitesimal canonical lift. This lift extends to a prolongation F-structure on P. In this general geometric framework the theory of Lie derivatives is considered. Particular emphasis is given to the morphisms which must be taken in order to state what kind of Lie derivative has to be chosen. On specializing the general theory of gauge-natural Lie derivatives of spinor fields to the case of the Kosmann lift, we recover the result originally found by Kosmann. We also show that in the case of a reductive G-structure one can introduce a "reductive Lie derivative" with respect to a certain class of generalized infinitesimal automorphisms. This differs, in general, from the gauge-natural one, and we conclude by showing that the "metric Lie derivative" introduced by Bourguignon and Gauduchon is in fact a particular kind of reductive rather than gauge-natural Lie derivative. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.