Abstract. We show that Cartan connections of a given type can be viewed as sections of a gauge natural bundle. This fact enables us to study natural operators on Cartan connections as gauge natural invariants. We deduce a modification of the Utiyama theorem. The relation to the classical results on natural operators on affine connections is discussed in Section 7.
AMSclassification. 58A20, 53A55
Keywords. Cartan connection, natural operator, gauge natural bundle, affine connection