arXiv research

We construct a connection and a curving on a bundle gerbe associated with lifting a structure group of a principal bundle to a central extension. The construction is based on certain structures on the bundle, i.e. connections and splittings. The Deligne cohomology class of the lifting bundle gerbe with the connection a…

Classifies connections on central extensions and finds vanishing obstruction classes.

We review and then combine two aspects of the theory of bundle gerbes. The first concerns lifting bundle gerbes and connections on those, developed by Murray and Gomi. Lifting gerbes represent obstructions against extending the structure group of a principal bundle. The second is the transgression of gerbes to loop spa…

In gauge theory, the Faddeev-Mickelsson-Shatashvili anomaly arises as a prolongation problem for the action of the gauge group on a bundle of projective Fock spaces. In this paper, we study this anomaly from the point of view of bundle gerbes and give several equivalent descriptions of the obstruction. These include li…

New theory connects non-abelian bundle gerbes to abelian ones.

Symmetries of bundle gerbes modeled using multiplicative vector fields.

A new spin structure is constructed for a bundle of harmonic forms.

New result on finite gerbes simplifies classification of certain bundles.

We develop the theory of Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbes and multiplicative bundle gerbes associated to any principal $G$-bundle with connection and a class in $H^4(BG, \ZZ)$ for a compact semi-simple Lie group $G$. The Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbe realises differential geometrically the Cheeger-Simons invariant. We apply …

We discuss various lifting and reduction problems for bundles and gerbes in the context of a strict Lie 2-group. We obtain a geometrical formulation (and a new proof) for the exactness of Breen's long exact sequence in non-abelian cohomology. We use our geometrical formulation in order to define a transgression map in …

We consider topological T-duality of torus bundles equipped with S^{1}-gerbes. We show how a geometry on the gerbe determines a reduction of its band to the subsheaf of S^{1}-valued functions which are constant along the torus fibres. We observe that such a reduction is exactly the additional datum needed for the const…

We prove that the category of abelian gerbes with connection over a smooth manifold is equivalent to a certain category of principal bundles over the free loop space. These bundles are equipped with a connection and with a "fusion" product with respect to triples of paths. The equivalence is established by explicit fun…

We show that the category of abelian gerbes over a smooth manifold is equivalent to a certain category of principal bundles over the free loop space. These principal bundles are equipped with fusion products and are equivariant with respect to thin homotopies between loops. The equivalence is established by a functor c…

Defines non-Abelian gerbes with connections for physical applications.

The caloron correspondence can be understood as an equivalence of categories between $G$-bundles over circle bundles and $LG \rtimes_ρS^1$-bundles where $LG$ is the group of smooth loops in $G$. We use it, and lifting bundle gerbes, to derive an explicit differential form based formula for the (real) string class of an…

We give a generalization of the notion of a Cartan-Ehresmann connection from Lie algebras to L-infinity algebras and use it to study the obstruction theory of lifts through higher String-like extensions of Lie algebras. We find (generalized) Chern-Simons and BF-theory functionals this way and describe aspects of their …

We consider Real bundle gerbes on manifolds equipped with an involution and prove that they are classified by their Real Dixmier-Douady class in Grothendieck's equivariant sheaf cohomology. We show that the Grothendieck group of Real bundle gerbe modules is isomorphic to twisted KR-theory for a torsion Real Dixmier-Dou…

Paper studies non-associativity in quantum systems with magnetic fields.

The explanation of the photoelectric effect by Einstein and Maxwell's field theory of electromagnetism have motivated De Broglie to make the hypothesis that matter exhibits both waves and particles like-properties. These representations of matter are enlightened by string theory which represents particles with stringli…

Just as $\Cstar$ principal bundles provide a geometric realisation of two-dimensional integral cohomology; gerbes or sheaves of groupoids, provide a geometric realisation of three dimensional integral cohomology through their Dixmier-Douady class. I consider an alternative, related, geometric realisation of three dimen…

Introduces Weyl bundle gerbe and shows it's not D-stably isomorphic.

The bigerbes introduced here give a refinement of the notion of 2-gerbes, representing degree four integral cohomology classes of a space. Defined in terms of bisimplicial line bundles, bigerbes have a symmetry with respect to which they form 'bundle 2-gerbes' in two ways; this structure replaces higher associativity c…

Just like Atiyah Lie algebroids encode the infinitesimal symmetries of principal bundles, exact Courant algebroids are believed to encode the infinitesimal symmetries of $S^1$-gerbes. At the same time, transitive Courant algebroids may be viewed as the higher analogue of Atiyah Lie algebroids, and the non-commutative a…

This masters thesis reviews bundle gerbe theory and the well-known basic bundle gerbe over SU(n). We introduce the cup product bundle gerbe, and show it is stably isomorphic to the pullback of the basic bundle gerbe by the Weyl map. This result enriches our understanding of the basic bundle gerbe, which has numerous ap…

Decomposes bundle gerbes on supermanifolds into simpler components.

We present a review of bundle gerbes, emphasizing their relations to Lie groups. Indeed, compact Lie groups do not only carry the structure of a Riemannian manifold, but also canonical families of bundle gerbes. We recall the construction of these bundle gerbes and their relation to loop groups. We discuss several alge…

Survey of bundle gerbes in geometry, field theory, and quantization.

We define 2-crossed module bundle 2-gerbes related to general Lie 2-crossed modules and discuss their properties. A 2-crossed module bundle 2-gerbe over a manifold is defined in terms of a so called 2-crossed module bundle gerbe, which is a crossed module bundle gerbe equipped with an extra sructure. It is shown that s…

This thesis reviews the theory of bundle gerbes and then examines the higher dimensional notion of a bundle 2-gerbe. The notion of a bundle 2-gerbe connection and 2-curving are introduced and it is shown that there is a class in $H^{4}(M;\Z)$ associated to any bundle 2-gerbe.

We make the category BGrb_M of bundle gerbes on a manifold M into a 2-category by providing 2-cells in the form of transformations of bundle gerbe morphisms. This description of BGrb_M as a 2-category is used to define the notion of a bundle 2-gerbe. To every bundle 2-gerbe on M is associated a class in H^4(M;Z). We de…

We develop the theory of simplicial extensions for bundle gerbes and their characteristic classes with a view towards studying descent problems and equivariance for bundle gerbes. Equivariant bundle gerbes are important in the study of orbifold sigma models. We consider in detail two examples: the basic bundle gerbe on…

By means of cohomology groups, we study relationships between equivariant gerbes with connection over a manifold with a Lie group action and gerbes with connection over the quotient space.

Rigorous model for 2-gerbes simplifies calculations in physics.

We consider the notion of stable isomorphism of bundle gerbes. It has the consequence that the stable isomorphism classes of bundle gerbes over a manifold M are in bijective correspondence with H^3(M, Z). Stable isomorphism sheds light on the local theory of bundle gerbes and enables us to develop a classifying theory …

Multiplicative bundle gerbes are gerbes over a Lie group which are compatible with the group structure. In this article connections on such bundle gerbes are introduced and studied. It is shown that multiplicative bundle gerbes with connection furnish geometrical constructions of the following objects: smooth central e…

The paper generalizes bundle gerbes over groupoids and their correspondence with PB groupoids.

In a previous paper we outlined how discrete torsion can be understood geometrically as an analogue of orbifold U(1) Wilson lines. In this paper we shall prove the remaining details. More precisely, in this paper we describe gerbes in terms of objects known as stacks (essentially, sheaves of categories), and develop mu…

We study geometry on real gerbes in the spirit of Cheeger-Simons theory. The concepts of adaptations and holonomy forms are introduced for flat connections on real gerbes. Their relations to complex gerbes with connections are presented, as well as results in loop and map spaces.

Constructs small bundle gerbes and proves index theorems for manifolds.

In this paper, we construct the index bundle gerbe of a family of self-adjoint Dirac-type operators, refining a construction of Segal. In a special case, we construct a geometric bundle gerbe called the caloron bundle gerbe, which comes with a natural connection and curving, and show that it is isomorphic to the analyt…

We introduce and study the notion of a biholomorphic gerbe with connection. The biholomorphic gerbe provides a natural geometrical framework for generalized Kahler geometry in a manner analogous to the way a holomorphic line bundle is related to Kahler geometry. The relation between the gerbe and the generalized Kahler…

In this paper we study n-composition series of affine manifolds. One composition series are classified using gerbe theory. It is natural to think that n-composition series must be classified using n-gerbe theory. In the last section of this, we propose a notion of abelian n-gerbe theory

We present a construction of a 2-Hilbert space of sections of a bundle gerbe, a suitable candidate for a prequantum 2-Hilbert space in higher geometric quantisation. We introduce a direct sum on the morphism categories in the 2-category of bundle gerbes and show that these categories are cartesian monoidal and abelian.…

We introduce an axiomatic framework for the parallel transport of connections on gerbes. It incorporates parallel transport along curves and along surfaces, and is formulated in terms of gluing axioms and smoothness conditions. The smoothness conditions are imposed with respect to a strict Lie 2-group, which plays the …

Gerbes encode spectral gaps in topological insulators.

From a certain strongly equivariant bundle gerbe with connection and curving over a smooth manifold on which a Lie group acts, we construct under some conditions a bundle gerbe with connection and curving over the quotient space. In general, the construction requires a choice, and we can consequently obtain distinct st…

We review a systematic construction of the 2-stack of bundle gerbes via descent, and extend it to non-abelian gerbes. We review the role of non-abelian gerbes in orientifold sigma models, for the anomaly cancellation in supersymmetric sigma models, and in a geometric description of so-called non-geometric T-duals.

Hermitian bundle gerbes with connection are geometric objects for which a notion of surface holonomy can be defined for closed oriented surfaces. We systematically introduce bundle gerbes by closing the pre-stack of trivial bundle gerbes under descent. Inspired by structures arising in a representation theoretic approa…