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Dual bundle

Mathematical operation on vector bundles

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Source updated March 8, 2026

In mathematics, the dual bundle is an operation on vector bundles extending the operation of duality for vector spaces.

01Definition

The dual bundle of a vector bundle $\pi :E\to X$ is the vector bundle $\pi ^{*}:E^{*}\to X$ whose fibers are the dual spaces to the fibers of $E$ .

Equivalently, $E^{*}$ can be defined as the Hom bundle $\mathrm {Hom} (E,\mathbb {R} \times X),$ that is, the vector bundle of morphisms from $E$ to the trivial line bundle $\mathbb {R} \times X\to X.$

02Constructions and examples

Given a local trivialization of $E$ with transition functions $t_{ij},$ a local trivialization of $E^{*}$ is given by the same open cover of $X$ with transition functions $t_{ij}^{*}=(t_{ij}^{T})^{-1}$ (the inverse of the transpose). The dual bundle $E^{*}$ is then constructed using the fiber bundle construction theorem. As particular cases:

The dual bundle of an associated bundle is the bundle associated to the dual representation of the structure group.
The dual bundle of the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold is its cotangent bundle.

03Properties

If the base space $X$ is paracompact and Hausdorff then a real, finite-rank vector bundle $E$ and its dual $E^{*}$ are isomorphic as vector bundles. However, just as for vector spaces, there is no natural choice of isomorphism unless $E$ is equipped with an inner product.

This is not true in the case of complex vector bundles: for example, the tautological line bundle over the Riemann sphere is not isomorphic to its dual. The dual $E^{*}$ of a complex vector bundle $E$ is indeed isomorphic to the conjugate bundle ${\overline {E}},$ but the choice of isomorphism is non-canonical unless $E$ is equipped with a hermitian product.

The Hom bundle $\mathrm {Hom} (E_{1},E_{2})$ of two vector bundles is canonically isomorphic to the tensor product bundle $E_{1}^{*}\otimes E_{2}.$

Given a morphism $f:E_{1}\to E_{2}$ of vector bundles over the same space, there is a morphism $f^{*}:E_{2}^{*}\to E_{1}^{*}$ between their dual bundles (in the converse order), defined fibrewise as the transpose of each linear map $f_{x}:(E_{1})_{x}\to (E_{2})_{x}.$ Accordingly, the dual bundle operation defines a contravariant functor from the category of vector bundles and their morphisms to itself.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Dual bundle”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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