Codazzi Tensors and the Topology of Surfaces

We introduce the notion of (0,m)-Codazzi tensors relative to an affine connection which extends the well known concept for m = 2. On compact Riemannian surfaces of genus we determine the dimension of the R-vector space of traceless Codazzi tensors, which depends on m and only, additionally we extend these result for genus zero. We give some exemplary applications to submanifolds in affine and in Riemannian geometry and to Weyl geometries.