Dear all.
I'm a theoretical physicist trying to understand the structure equations and their geometrical significance, this for their gravitational applications.
I know the relation between the Lie algebras and the Maurer-Cartan structure equations, but as far as I know, they are used in manifolds which are not necessarily Lie groups.
Questions:
What you are asking for is an introduction to the theory of $G$-structures, for which the (Maurer-Cartan) structure equations are a basic tool.
There are many sources for this material, starting, of course, with the fundamental works of Élie Cartan on the subject, though many find his expositors, who use more modern language, easier to follow.
S.-S. Chern has an article, The geometry of G-structures. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 72 (1966) 167–219, that I highly recommend as an introduction. There is Sternberg's book, Lectures on differential geometry, which is a good reference towards the end of the book. A more modern treatment specifically on the use of structure equations in modern differential geometry is R. Sharpe's book Differential geometry. Cartan's generalization of Klein's Erlangen program. Graduate Texts in Mathematics 166. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1997. There is also the book by Ivey and Landsberg Cartan for beginners: differential geometry via moving frames and exterior differential systems. Graduate Studies in Mathematics 61. AMS, Providence, RI, 2003.
That's just a small sample, but it should be enough to give you a choice of authors so that you can figure out which comes closest to being able to help you.
To elaborate on Robert's answer a little, the standard Maurer-Cartan equations are for a Lie group only. In particular, they express the structure equations of the associated Lie algebra (i.e., left-invariant vector fields) in terms of the dual Lie algebra (i.e., left-invariant differential forms) and the exterior derivative.
However, extensions of these equations are extremely useful in more general settings such as a Riemannian manifold. You can study a Riemannian metric, its Levi-Civita connection, and its curvature using its orthonormal frame bundle. You could try to do this using vector fields but, as far as I know, this turns into a bit of a mess. What's better is to use differential forms that behave nicely along each fiber. The Maurer-Cartan equations play a natural role here, leading to an elegant way to define and work with the connection and curvature of a Riemannian manifold.
I don't know if Robert has any lecture notes on this but if he does, that would be by far the best exposition available. Of course, if you're lucky enough to hear him lecture on it, that's even better. That's how I learned all of it. But otherwise I would recommend looking at the book by Ivey and Landsburg.
