Differentiable Cohomology of Gauge Groups

We give a definition of differentiable cohomology of a Lie group G (possibly infinite-dimensional) with coefficients in any abelian Lie group. This differentiable cohomology maps both to the cohomology of the group made discrete and to Lie algebra cohomology. We show that the secondary characteristic classes of Beilinson lead to differentiable cohomology classes with coefficients in C*. These may be viewed as an enrichment of the Chern-Simons differential forms. By transgression, classes in differentiable cohomology of a Lie group G lead to differentiable cohomology classes for gauge groups Map(M,G). These classes generalize the central extensions of loop groups. We also discuss holomorphic cohomology of complex Lie groups as the natural place to construct secondary classes. We present several conjectures relating the above cohomology classes to the differential forms of Bott-Shulman-Stasheff.