Related papers: Thin homotopy and the holonomy approach to gauge t…

The homotopy theory of gauge groups has received considerable attention in recent decades. In this work, we study the homotopy theory of gauge groups over some high dimensional manifolds. To be more specific, we study gauge groups of…

Both the gauge groups and $5$-manifolds are important in physics and mathematics. In this paper, we combine them together to study the homotopy aspects of gauge groups over $5$-manifolds. For principal bundles over non-simply connected…

We point out an incompleteness of formulations of gravitational and gauge theories that use traces of holonomies around closed curves as their basic variables. It is shown that in general such loop variables have to satisfy certain…

The approaches to quantum field theories based in the so called loop representation deserved much attention recently. In it, closed curves and holonomies around them play a central role. In this framework the group of loops and the group of…

By introducing various topologies on the homotopy groups of a topological space, some researchers make these well known notions in algebraic topology more useful and powerful. In this paper, first we recall and review some known topologies…

Let P be a principal bundle with semisimple compact simply connected structure group G over a compact simply connected four-manifold M. In this note we give explicit formulas for the rational homotopy groups and cohomology algebra of the…

After summarising the physical approach leading to twisted homotopy and after developing the cohomological approach further with respect to our previous work we propose a third alternative approach to twisted homotopy based on group…

In this note on coarse geometry we revisit coarse homotopy. We prove that coarse homotopy indeed is an equivalence relation, and this in the most general context of abstract coarse structures. We introduce (in a geometric way) coarse…

Connections on a trivial bundle MxG can be identified with their holonomy maps, i.e. with homomorphisms of a groupoid of paths in M into the gauge group G. For a connected compact G, various algebras depending on the set of the smooth…

The motivation for this paper stems \cite{CR} from the need to construct explicit isomorphisms of (possibly nontrivial) principal $G$-bundles on the space of loops or, more generally, of paths in some manifold $M$, over which I consider a…

We introduce a crossed module of piecewise linear surfaces and study the signature homomorphism, defined as the surface holonomy of a universal translation invariant $2$-connection. This provides a transform whereby surfaces are represented…

The aim of this paper is to show that the most elementary homotopy theory of $\mathbf{G}$-spaces is equivalent to a homotopy theory of simplicial sets over $\mathbf{BG}$, where $\mathbf{G}$ is a fixed group. Both homotopy theories are…

The homotopy theory of the blow up construction in algebraic and symplectic geometry is investigated via two approaches. The first approach introduces and develops fibrewise surgery theory, for which the fibrewise framing is characterized…

A key aspect of a recent proposal for a {\em generalized loop representation} of quantum Yang-Mills theory and gravity is considered. Such a representation of the quantum theory has been expected to arise via consideration of a particular…

Let $M$ be a smooth manifold. We use Chern-Weil theory to study the characteristic classes of principal $G$-bundles built from continuous families of $\pi_{1}(M)$-representations, where $G$ is a compact Lie group. We then relate these…

We study generalized symmetries in a simplified arena in which the usual quantum field theories of physics are replaced with topological field theories and the smooth structure with which the symmetry groups of physics are usually endowed…

Let $G$ be a compact connected Lie group with $\pi_1(G)\cong\mathbb{Z}$. We study the homotopy types of gauge groups of principal $G$-bundles over Riemann surfaces. This can be applied to an explicit computation of the homotopy groups of…

We define the thin fundamental categorical group ${\mathcal P}_2(M,*)$ of a based smooth manifold $(M,*)$ as the categorical group whose objects are rank-1 homotopy classes of based loops on $M$, and whose morphisms are rank-2 homotopy…

Within the discrete gauge theory which is the basis of spin foam models, the problem of macroscopically faithful coarse graining is studied. Macroscopic data is identified; it contains the holonomy evaluation along a discrete set of loops…

This monograph introduces a framework for genuine proper equivariant stable homotopy theory for Lie groups. The adjective `proper' alludes to the feature that equivalences are tested on compact subgroups, and that the objects are built from…