Internal circle uplifts, transversality and stratified G-structures

Abstract: We study stratified G-structures in ${\cal N}=2$ compactifications of M-theory on eight-manifolds $M$ using the uplift to the auxiliary nine-manifold ${\hat M}=M\times S^1$. We show that the cosmooth generalized distribution ${\hat {\cal D}}$ on ${\hat M}$ which arises in this formalism may have pointwise transverse or non-transverse intersection with the pull-back of the tangent bundle of $M$, a fact which is responsible for the subtle relation between the spinor stabilizers arising on $M$ and ${\hat M}$ and for the complicated stratified G-structure on $M$ which we uncovered in previous work. We give a direct explanation of the latter in terms of the former and relate explicitly the defining forms of the $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ structure which exists on the generic locus ${\cal U}$ of $M$ to the defining forms of the $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ structure which exists on an open subset ${\hat {\cal U}}$ of ${\hat M}$, thus providing a dictionary between the eight- and nine-dimensional formalisms.