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Survey Of Generalized Contact Structures, James Bland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A generalized complex structure, as introduced by N. Hitchin, is a common generalization of both symplectic and complex structures. Generalized complex geometry provides a natural geometric framework to understand certain recent developments in string physics, and has developed into an active area of research. Very recently, an odd dimensional analogue of a generalized complex structure, namely a generalized contact structure, has been introduced in the works of Vaizman, Poon and Wade. In this thesis, we survey the recent works on generalized contact structures. More importantly, we prove a local normal form theorem of a generalized contact structure. This result, which …