A new type of gauge invariance for a collection of massless spin-2 fields. II. Geometrical interpretation

For pt. I see ibid., vol.4, p.1267-78, 1987. A geometrical interpretation is provided for the new gauge symmetries which were found in I to be applicable to a collection of massless spin-2 fields. On a real manifold, M, the author introduces the notion of tensor fields valued in an associative commutative algebra, A, and shows that in the case where A has as identity element, most of the standard constructions and results of ordinary real-valued differential geometry concerning derivative operators, metrics and curvature can be directly carried over to the algebra-valued case.