Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2026 / iii / Paper 131 / 3 / a / Solution

An orientation selects the positive ordered bases in each tangent space. On an oriented $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold, the Riemannian volume form ${\omega }_g$ is the unique smooth $n$-form satisfyingfor every positively oriented orthonormal frame. In positively oriented local coordinates,

The metric induces an inner product on the bundle ${\Lambda }^p{T}^{\ast }M$ of $p$-forms. The Hodge star operator is the unique linear mapsuch thatfor all $p$-forms $\alpha ,\beta$. With the codifferential $\delta$, the Laplace-Beltrami operator on differential forms is

The Hodge decomposition theorem says that on a compact oriented Riemannian manifold,an $L^2$-orthogonal direct sum, where ${\mathcal{H}}^p(M)=\ker \Delta$ is the finite-dimensional space of harmonic $p$-forms. Every de Rham cohomology class has exactly one harmonic representative.

Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.