Related papers: Differentiable Categories, gerbes and G-structures

A theory of characteristic classes of vector bundles and smooth manifolds plays an important role in the theory of smooth manifolds. An investigation of reasonable notions of characteristic classes of singular spaces started since a…

We establish a relation between smooth 2-functors defined on the path 2-groupoid of a smooth manifold and differential forms on this manifold. This relation can be understood as a part of a dictionary between fundamental notions from…

Differential forms is a highly geometric formalism for physics used from field theories to General Relativity (GR) which has been a great upgrade over vector calculus with the advantages of being coordinate-free and carrying a high degree…

Diffeology extends differential geometry to spaces beyond smooth manifolds. This paper explores diffeology's key features and illustrates its utility with examples including singular and quotient spaces, and applications in symplectic…

We introduce an alternative formalization of curved spaces in which the concept of a pointwise affine space, as defined here, replaces that of a manifold. New or modified definitions of familiar notions from differential geometry such as…

We give a functorial definition of $G$-gerbes over a simplicial complex when the local symmetry group $G$ is non-Abelian. These combinatorial gerbes are naturally endowed with a connective structure and a curving. This allows us to define a…

Braided non-commutative differential geometry is studied. In particular we investigate the theory of (bicovariant) differential calculi in braided abelian categories. Previous results on crossed modules and Hopf bimodules in braided…

The paper gives a categorical approach to generalized manifolds such as orbit spaces and leaf spaces of foliations. It is suggested to consider these spaces as sets equipped with some additional structure which generalizes the notion of…

The geometric and algebraic properties of Gray categories with duals are investigated by means of a diagrammatic calculus. The diagrams are three-dimensional stratifications of a cube, with regions, surfaces, lines and vertices labelled by…

This is a long summary of the author's book "D-manifolds and d-orbifolds: a theory of derived differential geometry", available at http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/~joyce/dmanifolds.html . A shorter survey paper on the book, focussing on…

We study non-abelian differentiable gerbes over stacks using the theory of Lie groupoids. More precisely, we develop the theory of connections on Lie groupoid $G$-extensions, which we call "connections on gerbes", and study the induced…

These notes are designed for those who either plan to work in differential geometry, or at least want to have a good reason not to do it. We discuss smooth curves and surfaces -- the main gate to differential geometry. We focus on the…

A theory of graded manifolds can be viewed as a generalization of differential geometry of smooth manifolds. It allows one to work with functions which locally depend not only on ordinary real variables, but also on $\mathbb{Z}$-graded…

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…

Since curved dg algebras, and modules over them, have differentials whose square is not zero, these objects have no cohomology, and there is no classical derived category. For different purposes, different notions of "derived" categories…

We introduce an approach to the categorification of rings, via the notion of distributive categories with negative objects, and use it to lay down categorical foundations for the study of super, quantum and non-commutative combinatorics.…

We reconsider differential geometry from the point of view of the quantum theory of non-relativistic spinning particles, which provides examples of supersymmetric quantum mechanics. This enables us to encode geometrical structure in…

Tangent categories are categories equipped with a tangent functor: an endofunctor with certain natural transformations which make it behave like the tangent bundle functor on the category of smooth manifolds. They provide an abstract…

We introduce differentiable stacks and explain the relationship with Lie groupoids. Then we study $S^1$-bundles and $S^1$-gerbes over differentiable stacks. In particular, we establish the relationship between $S^1$-gerbes and groupoid…

We "solve" the Freed-Witten anomaly equation, i.e., we find a geometrical classification of the B-field and A-field configurations in the presence of D-branes that are anomaly-free. The mathematical setting being provided by the geometry of…