On Bott-Chern forms and their applications

Abstract: We use Chern-Weil theory for Hermitian holomorphic vector bundles with canonical connections for explicit computation of the Chern forms of trivial bundles with special non-diagonal Hermitian metrics. We prove that every del-dellbar exact real form of the type (k,k) on an n-dimensional complex manifold X arises as a difference of the Chern character forms of trivial Hermitian vector bundles with canonical connections, and that (modulo the image of del and delbar) every real form of type (k,k), k<n, arises as a Bott-Chern form for two Hermitian metrics on some trivial vector bundle over X. The latter result is a complex manifold analogue of Proposition 2.6 in the paper arXiv: 0810.4935 by J. Simons and D. Sullivan. As an application, we obtain an explicit formula for the Bott-Chern form of a short exact sequence of holomorphic vector bundles, considered by Bott and Chern in classic 1965 paper, for the case when the first term is a line bundle. We also present a very simple explicit formula for the total Chern form of a hypersurface in the complex projective space.