Related papers: Adjusted connections on non-abelian bundle gerbes

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…

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…

Many physical theories, including notably string theory, require non-abelian higher gauge fields defining higher holonomy. Previous approaches to such higher connections on categorified principal bundles require these to be fake flat. This…

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…

Bundle gerbes are a higher version of line bundles, we present nonabelian bundle gerbes as a higher version of principal bundles. Connection, curving, curvature and gauge transformations are studied both in a global coordinate independent…

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 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…

In recent years, attempts to generalize lattice gauge theories to model topological order have been carried out through the so called $2$-gauge theories. These have opened the door to interesting new models and new topological phases which…

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 study gauge theories based on nonabelian 2-forms. Certain connections on loop space give rise to generalized covariant derivatives that include a nonabelian 2-form. This can be used to find rather straightforward expressions for the…

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…

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…

We provide a pedagogical introduction to the theory of principal 2-bundles with adjusted connections and show how they enter the description of geometric and non-geometric T-dualities as proposed in arXiv:2204.01783. This description…

A fundamental problem in formulating higher Chern-Simons theories is the construction of a consistent higher gauge theory that circumvents the fake-flatness constraint. Here, we propose a solution to this problem using adjusted higher…

Just as gauge theory describes the parallel transport of point particles using connections on bundles, higher gauge theory describes the parallel transport of 1-dimensional objects (e.g. strings) using 2-connections on 2-bundles. A 2-bundle…

M2-branes couple to a 3-form potential, which suggests that their description involves a non-abelian 2-gerbe or, equivalently, a principal 3-bundle. We show that current M2-brane models fit this expectation: they can be reformulated as…

It is found that the 2-index potential in nonabelian theories does not behave geometrically as a connection but that, considered as an element of the second de Rham cohomology group twisted by a flat connection, it fits well with all the…

We make the observation that M-brane models defined in terms of 3-algebras can be interpreted as higher gauge theories involving Lie 2-groups. Such gauge theories arise in particular in the description of non-abelian gerbes. This…

We present the most general gauge-invariant action functional for coupled 1- and 2-form gauge fields with kinetic terms in generic dimensions, i.e. dropping eventual contributions that can be added in particular space-time dimensions only…

We introduce an axiomatic framework for the parallel transport of connections on gerbes. It incorporates parallel transport along curves and along surfaces, and is formulated in terms of gluing axioms and smoothness conditions. The…