On a Metric Affine Manifold with Several Orthogonal Complementary Distributions

A Riemannian manifold endowed with k>2 orthogonal complementary distributions (called here an almost multi-product structure) appears in such topics as multiply twisted or warped products and the webs or nets composed of orthogonal foliations. In this article, we define the mixed scalar curvature of an almost multi-product structure endowed with a linear connection, and represent this kind of curvature using fundamental tensors of distributions and the divergence of a geometrically interesting vector field. Using this formula, we prove decomposition and non-existence theorems and integral formulas that generalize results (for k=2) on almost product manifolds with the Levi-Civita connection. Some of our results are illustrated by examples with statistical and semi-symmetric connections.