Related papers: Explicit String bundles
From a certain strongly equivariant bundle gerbe with connection and curving over a smooth manifold on which a Lie group acts, we construct under some conditions a bundle gerbe with connection and curving over the quotient space. In…
We describe the geometrical ladder of equations for Abelian bundles and gerbes, as well as higher generalisations, in terms of the cohomology of an operator that combines de Rham and Cech cohomology.
Recent work on four dimensional effective descriptions of the heterotic string has identified the moduli of such systems as being given by kernels of maps between ordinary Dolbeault cohomology groups. The maps involved are defined by the…
In the paper arXiv:0810.4291 we have shown, in the context of type II superstring theory, the classification of the allowed B-field and A-field configurations in the presence of anomaly-free D-branes, the mathematical framework being…
Electromagnetism can be generalized to Yang-Mills theory by replacing the group U(1)$ by a nonabelian Lie group. This raises the question of whether one can similarly generalize 2-form electromagnetism to a kind of "higher-dimensional…
In this note we consider a few interesting properties of discrete connections on principal bundles when the structure group of the bundle is an abelian Lie group. In particular, we show that the discrete connection form and its curvature…
We give a very simple construction of the string 2-group as a strict Fr\'echet Lie 2-group. The corresponding crossed module is defined using the conjugation action of the loop group on its central extension, which drastically simplifies…
Higher bundles are homotopy coherent generalisations of classical fibre bundles. They appear in numerous contexts in geometry, topology and physics. In particular, higher principal bundles provide the geometric framework for higher-group…
Graded bundles are a class of graded manifolds which represent a natural generalisation of vector bundles and include the higher order tangent bundles as canonical examples. We present and study the concept of the linearisation of graded…
In this paper, we develop the mathematical formulation of metric string structures. These play a crucial role in the formulation of certain six-dimensional superconformal field theories and we believe that they also underlie potential…
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…
We make the category BGrb_M of bundle gerbes on a manifold M into a 2-category by providing 2-cells in the form of transformations of bundle gerbe morphisms. This description of BGrb_M as a 2-category is used to define the notion of a…
The notion of crossed modules for Lie 2-algebras is introduced. We show that, associated to such a crossed module, there is a strict Lie 3-algebra structure on its mapping cone complex and a strict Lie 2-algebra structure on its…
Reductions of higher tangent bundles of Lie groupoids provide natural examples of geometric structures which we would like to call higher algebroids. Such objects can be also constructed abstractly starting from an arbitrary almost Lie…
We recall and partially improve four versions of smooth, non-abelian gerbes: Cech cocycles, classifying maps, bundle gerbes, and principal 2-bundles. We prove that all these four versions are equivalent, and so establish new relations…
In this note we identify two complex structures (one is given by algebraic geometry, the other by gauge theory) on the set of isomorphism classes of holomorphic bundles with section on a given compact complex manifold. In the case of line…
The worldvolume theory of coincident M5-branes is expected to contain a nonabelian 2-form/nonabelian gerbe gauge theory that is a higher analog of self-dual Yang-Mills theory. But the precise details -- in particular the global moduli /…
We review a systematic construction of the 2-stack of bundle gerbes via descent, and extend it to non-abelian gerbes. We review the role of non-abelian gerbes in orientifold sigma models, for the anomaly cancellation in supersymmetric sigma…
In this article, we introduce the first degrees of a cochain complex associated to a strict Lie 2-group whose cohomology is shown to extend the classical cohomology theory of Lie groups. In particular, we show that the second cohomology…
We consider the E8 x E8 heterotic string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau manifolds with bundles containing abelian factors in their structure group. Generic low energy consequences such as the generalised Green-Schwarz mechanism for the…