Related papers: Transgression to Loop Spaces and its Inverse, III:…
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…
We prove that isomorphism classes of principal bundles over a diffeological space are in bijection to certain maps on its free loop space, both in a setup with and without connections on the bundles. The maps on the loop space are smooth…
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…
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…
I categorify the definition of fibre bundle, replacing smooth manifolds with differentiable categories, Lie groups with coherent Lie 2-groups, and bundles with a suitable notion of 2-bundle. To link this with previous work, I show that…
A loop is a rather general algebraic structure that has an identity element and division, but is not necessarily associative. Smooth loops are a direct generalization of Lie groups. A key example of a non-Lie smooth loop is the loop of unit…
Every principal G-bundle is classified up to equivalence by a homotopy class of maps into the classifying space of G. On the other hand, for every nice topological space Milnor constructed a strict model of loop space, that is a group.…
We consider smooth families of Lie groups (group bundles) and connections that are compatible with the group operation. We characterize the space of group connections on a group bundle as an affine space modeled over the vector space of…
Connections and curvings on gerbes are beginning to play a vital role in differential geometry and mathematical physics -- first abelian gerbes, and more recently nonabelian gerbes. These concepts can be elegantly understood using the…
We show that the category of affine bundles over a smooth manifold M is equivalent to the category of affine spaces modelled on projective finitely generated C^\infty(M)-modules. Using this equivalence of categories, we are able to give an…
Closed strings can be seen either as one-dimensional objects in a target space or as points in the free loop space. Correspondingly, a B-field can be seen either as a connection on a gerbe over the target space, or as a connection on a line…
A bundle gerbe is constructed from an oriented smooth vector bundle of even rank with a fiberwise inner product, over a compact connected orientable smooth manifold with Riemannian metric. From a trivialization of the bundle gerbe is…
We construct smooth bundles with base and fiber products of two spheres whose total spaces have non-vanishing $\hat{A}$-genus. We then use these bundles to locate non-trivial rational homotopy groups of spaces of Riemannian metrics with…
A gauge theory is associated with a principal bundle endowed with a connection permitting to define horizontal lifts of paths. The horizontal lifts of surfaces cannot be defined into a principal bundle structure. An higher gauge theory is…
We introduce various versions of spin structures on free loop spaces of smooth manifolds, based on a classical notion due to Killingback, and additionally coupled to two relations between loops: thin homotopies and loop fusion. The central…
We prove that the bundles with flat connections on configuration spaces associated to braided fusion categories, as well as the bundles with flat connections on moduli spaces of curves (conformal blocks) associated to modular fusion…
The topological classification of gerbes, as principal bundles with the structure group the projective unitary group of a complex Hilbert space, over a topological space $H$ is given by the third cohomology $\text{H}^3(H, \Bbb Z)$. When $H$…
Given a bundle gerbe on a compact smooth manifold or, more generally, on a compact \'etale Lie groupoid $M$, we show that the corresponding category of gerbe modules, if it is non-trivial, is equivalent to the category of finitely generated…
Bundle gerbes are simple examples of higher geometric structures that show their utility in dealing with topological subtleties of physical theories. I review a recent construction of torsion topological invariants for condensed matter…
We define the notion of adjustment for strict Lie 2-groups and provide the complete cocycle description for non-Abelian gerbes with connections whose structure 2-group is an adjusted 2-group. Most importantly, we depart from the common…