In differential geometry, the jet bundle is a certain construction which makes a new smooth fiber bundle out of a given smooth fiber bundle. It makes it possible to write differential equations on sections of a fiber bundle in an invariant form.
Historically, jet bundles are attributed to Ehresmann, and were an advance on the method (prolongation) of Elie Cartan, of dealing geometrically with higher derivatives, by imposing differential form conditions on newly-introduced formal variables. Jet bundles are sometimes called sprays, although sprays usually refer more specifically to the associated vector field induced on the corresponding bundle (e.g., the geodesic spray on Finsler manifolds.)
More recently, jet bundles have appeared as a concise way to describe phenomena associated with the derivatives of maps, particularly those associated with the calculus of variations. Consequently, the jet bundle is now recognized as the correct domain for a geometrical covariant field theory and much work is done in general relativistic formulations of fields using this approach.
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Let
be a fiber bundle
in a category of manifolds
and let
,
with
.
Let
denote the set of all local sections whose domain contains
.
Let
be a multi-index (an ordered m-tuple of integers), then


Define the local sections
to have the same
-jet
at
if

The relation that two maps have the same r-jet is an equivalence relation. An
r-jet is an equivalence class under this
relation, and the r-jet with representative
is denoted
.
The integer r is also called
the order of the jet.
is the source of
.
is the target of
.
The
jet manifold of
is the set

and is denoted
.
We may define projections
and
called the source and target projections
respectively, by
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If
,
then the k-jet
projection is the function
defined by
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From this definition, it is clear that
and that if
,
then
.
It is conventional to regard
,
the identity
map on
and to identify
with
.
The functions
and
are smooth surjective submersions.

A coordinate system on
will generate a coordinate system on
.
Let
be an adapted coordinate chart on
,
where
.
The induced coordinate chart
on
is defined by
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where
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and the
functions

are specified by

and are known as the derivative coordinates.
Given an atlas of adapted charts
on
,
the corresponding collection of charts
is a finite-dimensional
atlas on
.
Since the atlas on each
defines a manifold, the triples
and
all define fibered manifolds. In particular, if
is a fiber bundle, the triple
defines the
jet bundle of
.
If
is an open submanifold, then

If
,
then the fiber
is denoted
.
Let
be a local section of
with domain
.
The
jet prolongation of
is the map
defined by

Note that
,
so
really is a section. In local coordinates,
is given by

We identify
with
.
If
is the trivial bundle
,
then there is a canonical diffeomorphism between the first jet
bundle
and
.
To construct this diffeomorphism, for each
write
.
Then, whenever 

Consequently, the mapping
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is well-defined and is clearly injective. Writing it out
in coordinates shows that it is a diffeomorphism, because if
are coordinates on
,
where
is the identity coordinate, then the derivative coordinates
on
correspond to the coordinates
on
.
Likewise, if
is the trivial bundle
,
then there exists a canonical diffeomorphism between
and 
A differential 1-form
on the space
is called a contact form (ie.
)
if it is pulled back to the
zero form on
by all prolongations. In other words, if
,
then
if and only
if, for every open submanifold
and every 

The distribution on
generated by the contact forms is called the Cartan
distribution. It is the main geometrical structure on jet
spaces and plays an important role in the geometric theory of partial differential
equations. The Cartan distributions are not involutive and are
of growing dimension when passing to higher order jet spaces.
Surprisingly though, when passing to the space of infinite order
jets
this distribution is involutive and finite dimensional. Its
dimension coinciding with the dimension of the base manifold
.
Let us consider the case
,
where
and
.
Then,
defines the first jet bundle, and may be coordinated by
,
where
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for all
and
.
A general 1-form on
takes the form

A section
has first prolongation
.
Hence,
can be calculated as
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This will vanish for all sections
if and only if
and
.
Hence,
must necessarily be a multiple of the basic contact form
.
Proceeding to the second jet space
with additional coordinate
,
such that

a general 1-form has the construction

This is a contact form if and only if
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which implies that
and
.
Therefore,
is a contact form if and only if

where
is the next basic contact form (Note that here we are identifying
the form
with its pull-back
to
).
In general, providing
,
a contact form on
can be written as a linear combination of the basic
contact forms

where
.
Similar arguments lead to a complete characterization of all contact forms.
In local coordinates, every contact one-form on
can be written as a linear combination

with smooth coefficients
of the basic contact forms

is known as the order of the contact form
.
Note that contact forms on
have orders at most
.
Contact forms provide a characterization of those local sections of
which are prolongations of sections of
.
Let
,
then
where
if and only if 
A general vector
field on the total space
,
coordinated by
,
is

A vector field is called horizontal, meaning
all the vertical coefficients vanish, if
.
A vector field is called vertical, meaning all
the horizontal coefficients vanish, if
.
For fixed
,
we identify

having coordinates
,
with an element in the fiber
of
over
,
called a tangent vector in
.
A section
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is called a vector field on
with
and
.
The jet bundle
is coordinated by
.
For fixed
,
identify
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having coordinates
,
with an element in the fiber
of
over
,
called a tangent vector in
.
Here,
are real-valued functions on
.
A section
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is a vector field on
,
and we say
.
Let
be a fiber bundle. An
order partial differential
equation on
is a closed embedded submanifold
of the jet manifold
.
A solution is a local section
satisfying
.
Let us consider an example of a first order partial differential equation.
Let
be the trivial bundle
with global coordinates
.
Then the map
defined by

gives rise to the differential equation

which can be written

The particular section
defined by

has first prolongation given by

and is a solution of this differential equation, because
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and so
for every
.
A local diffeomorphism
defines a contact transformation of order
if it preserves the contact ideal, meaning that if
is any contact form on
,
then
is also a contact form.
The flow generated by a vector field
on the jet space
forms a one-parameter group of contact transformations if and only
if the Lie
derivative
of any contact form
preserves the contact ideal.
Let us begin with the first order case. Consider a general
vector field
on
,
given by

We now apply
to the basic contact forms
,
and obtain
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where we have expanded the exterior derivative of the functions in terms of their coordinates. Next, we note that

and so we may write
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Therefore,
determines a contact transformation if and only if the coefficients
of
and
in the formula vanish. The latter requirements imply the
contact conditions

The former requirements provide explicit formulae for the
coefficients of the first derivative terms in
:
where 
denotes the zeroth order truncation of the total derivative
.
Thus, the contact conditions uniquely prescribe the prolongation
of any point or contact vector field. That is, if
satisfies these equations,
is called the
prolongation of
to a vector field on
.
These results are best understood when applied to a particular example. Hence, let us examine the following.
Let us consider the case
,
where
and
.
Then,
defines the first jet bundle, and may be coordinated by
,
where
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for all
and
.
A contact form on
has the form

Let us consider a vector
on
,
having the form

Then, the first prolongation of this vector field to
is
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If we now take the Lie derivative of the contact form with
respect to this prolonged vector field,
,
we obtain
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But, we may identify
.
Thus, we get
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Hence, for
to preserve the contact ideal, we require
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And so the first prolongation of
to a vector field on
is

Let us also calculate the second prolongation of
to a vector field on
.
We have
as coordinates on
.
Hence, the prolonged vector has the form

The contacts forms are
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To preserve the contact ideal, we require
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Now,
has no
dependency. Hence, from this equation we will pick up the formula
for
,
which will necessarily be the same result as we found for
.
Therefore, the problem is analogous to prolonging the vector field
to
.
That is to say, we may generate the
-prolongation
of a vector field by recursively applying the Lie derivative of the
contact forms with respect to the prolonged vector fields,
times. So, we have

and so
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Therefore, the Lie derivative of the second contact form with
respect to
is
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Again, let us identify
and
.
Then we have
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Hence, for
to preserve the contact ideal, we require
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And so the second prolongation of
to a vector field on
is

Note that the first prolongation of
can be recovered by omitting the second derivative terms in
,
or by projecting back to
.
The inverse
limit of the sequence of projections
gives rise to the infinite jet space
.
A point
is the equivalence class of sections of π that have the same k-jet in p as σ
for all values of k. The
natural projection
maps
into p.
Just by thinking in terms of coordinates,
appears to be an infinite-dimensional geometric object. In fact,
the simplest way of introducing a differentiable structure on
,
not relying on differentiable charts, is given by the differential
calculus over commutative algebras. Dual to the sequence of
projections
of manifolds is the sequence of injections
of commutative algebras. Let's denote
simply by
.
Take now the direct
limit
of the
's.
It will be a commutative algebra, which can be assumed to be the
smooth functions algebra over the geometric object
.
Observe that
,
being born as a direct limit, carries an additional structure: it
is a filtered commutative algebra.
Roughly speaking, a concrete element
will always belong to some
,
so it is a smooth function on the finite-dimensional manifold Jk(π) in the
usual sense.
Given a k-th order system
of PDE's
,
the collection
of vanishing on
smooth functions on
is an ideal in the algebra
,
and hence in the direct limit
too.
Enhance
by adding all the possible compositions of total
derivatives applied to all its elements. This way we get a new
ideal I of
which is now closed under the operation of taking total derivative.
The submanifold
of
cut out by I is called the
infinite prolongation of
.
Geometrically,
is the manifold of formal solutions of
.
A point
of
can be easily seen to be represented by a section σ whose k-jet's graph is tangent to
at the point
with arbitrarily high order of tangency.
Analytically, if
is given by
,
a formal solution can be understood as the set of Taylor
coefficients of a section σ in a point
p that make vanish the Taylor series of
at the point p.
Most importantly, the closure properties of I imply that
is tangent to the infinite-order contact structure
on
,
so that by restricting
to
one gets the diffiety
,
and can study the associated C-spectral sequence.
This article has defined jets of local sections of a bundle, but
it is possible to define jets of functions
,
where
and
are manifolds; the jet of
then just corresponds to the jet of the section
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(
is known as the graph of the function
)
of the trivial bundle
.
However, this restriction does not simplify the theory, as the
global triviality of
does not imply the global triviality of
.
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