Target space duality I: General theory

We develop a systematic framework for studying target space duality at the classical level. We show that target space duality between manifolds M and M̃ arises because of the existence of a very special symplectic manifold. This manifold locally looks like M×M̃ and admits a double fibration. We analyze the local geometric requirements necessary for target space duality and prove that both manifolds must admit flat orthogonal connections. We show how abelian duality, nonabelian duality and Poisson-Lie duality are all special cases of a more general framework. As an example we exhibit new (nonlinear) dualities in the case M=M̃=Rⁿ.