Multiplicative Forms and Spencer Operators

Abstract: Motivated by our attempt to recast Cartan's work on Lie pseudogroups in a more global and modern language, we are brought back to the question of understanding the linearization of multiplicative forms on groupoids and the corresponding integrability problem. From this point of view, the novelty of this paper is that we study forms with coefficients. However, the main contribution of this paper is conceptual: the finding of the relationship between multiplicative forms and Cartan's work, which provides a completely new approach to integrability theorems for multiplicative forms. Back to Cartan, the multiplicative point of view shows that, modulo Lie's functor, the Cartan Pfaffian system (itself a multiplicative form with coefficients!) is the same thing as the classical Spencer operator.