For the underlying Riemannian metric and complex structure , the fundamental form is . It is a real (1, 1)-form. In complex dimension , the compatible orientation has Riemannian volume form , and its Hodge star operator satisfies
Let be a holomorphic local frame of a Hermitian holomorphic line bundle and put . The Chern connection and its curvature are locally
Thus has type . Because the connection is unitary, , so is a real (1, 1)-form.
A real (1, 1)-form is a form satisfying . In holomorphic coordinates it has the form
It is a positive real (1, 1)-form when
for every nonzero tangent vector of type , equivalently when the Hermitian matrix is positive definite.
A holomorphic local trivialization of a holomorphic line bundle is equivalently a nowhere-zero holomorphic local frame . A connection is unitary when it preserves the fiberwise Hermitian inner product:
The Chern connection is the unique unitary connection whose part is the bundle's Dolbeault partial connection .
In a holomorphic frame, put . The local formula for the Chern connection on a line bundle is
The curvature therefore has type . Since a unitary connection has imaginary curvature, , and hence
Thus is a real -form.
For connections on and on , the tensor product connection is defined on decomposable local sections by
The curvature of a tensor product connection on line bundles is additive:
Consequently
which is positive whenever both summands are positive.
For the final assertion, simultaneously diagonalize the positive Hermitian matrices of and by congruence at the chosen point. In the resulting coframe,
A direct wedge-product calculation gives
If and are linearly independent, at least one of these minors is nonzero. Every coefficient is positive, so the sum is strictly positive. This is wedge positivity for two positive (1, 1)-forms.