English

Higher Wess-Zumino-Witten term from semistrict higher Chern-Simons theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-05-29 v1

Abstract

We show that in any 2n+22n+2 dimensions, the higher Chern-Simons action built from a semistrict Lie 2-algebra gives a non-trivial higher Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term under a higher gauge transformation. The key point is that the non-zero Jacobiator directly generates the higher WZW term, hereas it vanishes when reduced to the strict case.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.29282,
  title  = {Higher Wess-Zumino-Witten term from semistrict higher Chern-Simons theory},
  author = {Mengyao Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29282},
  year   = {2026}
}