Couplings of $3$-anchored Bundles

Abstract

This work develops an algebraic framework for merging two $3$-anchored bundles over the same base manifold, equipped with mutual actions and two twisted cocycle terms, so as to obtain a $3$-Lie algebroid structure on the corresponding Whitney sum. We also record the purely algebraic counterpart of this construction, namely the bicocycle double cross product $3$-Lie algebra, obtained by removing the anchor and Leibniz-type compatibility conditions. The resulting framework provides a unified setting for $3$-Lie algebroids and contains, as special cases, unified products, double cross products, semi-direct products, cocycle extensions, and direct products.