Overconnections and the energy-tensors of gauge and gravitational fields

A geometric construction for obtaining a prolongation of a connection to a connection of a bundle of connections is presented. This determines a natural extension of the notion of canonical energy-tensor which suits gauge and gravitational fields, and shares the main properties of the energy-tensor of a matter field in the jet space formulation of Lagrangian field theory, in particular with regards to symmetries of the Poincaré–Cartan form. Accordingly, the joint energy-tensor for interacting matter and gauge fields turns out to be a natural geometric object, whose definition needs no auxiliary structures. Various topics related to energy-tensors, symmetries and the Einstein equations in a theory with interacting matter, gauge and gravitational fields can be viewed under a clarifying light. Finally, the symmetry determined by the “Komar superpotential” is expressed as a symmetry of the gravitational Poincaré–Cartan form.