Related papers: Loop and Path Spaces and Four-Dimensional BF Theor…
It is shown that the canonical formulation of the abelian BF theory in D = 3 allows to obtain topological invariants associated to curves and points in the plane. The method consists on finding the Hamiltonian on-shell of the theory coupled…
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…
This paper is motivated by recent developments of higher gauge theory. Different from its style of using higher category theory, we try to describe the concept of higher parallel transport within setting of classical principal bundle…
We show that the holonomy of a connection defined on a principal composite bundle is related by a non-abelian Stokes theorem to the composition of the holonomies associated with the connections of the component bundles of the composite. We…
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…
The most general gauge-invariant marginal deformation of four-dimensional abelian BF-type topological field theory is studied. It is shown that the deformed quantum field theory is topological and that its observables compute, in addition…
In this paper we discuss topological BF theories in 3 and 4 dimensions. Observables are associated to ordinary knots and links (in 3 dimensions) and to 2-knots (in 4 dimensions). The vacuum expectation values of such observables give a wide…
For a principal bundle $P\to M$ equipped with a connection ${\bar A}$, we study an infinite dimensional bundle ${\mathcal P}^{\rm dec}_{\bar A}P$ over the space of paths on $M$, with the points of ${\mathcal P}^{\rm dec}_{\bar A}P$ being…
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…
In this paper we establish a one-to-one correspondence between $S^1$-gerbes with connections, on the one hand, and their holonomies, for simply connected manifolds, or their parallel transports, in the general case, on the other hand. This…
The supersymmetric version of a topological quantum field theory describing flat connections, the super BF-theory, is studied in the superspace formalism. A set of observables related to topological invariants is derived from the curvature…
Canonical quantization of abelian BF-type topological field theory coupled to extended sources on generic d-dimensional manifolds and with curved line bundles is studied. Sheaf cohomology is used to construct the appropriate topological…
A nice differential-geometric framework for (non-abelian) higher gauge theory is provided by principal 2-bundles, i.e. categorified principal bundles. Their total spaces are Lie groupoids, local trivializations are kinds of Morita…
What remains of a geometrical notion like that of a principal bundle when the base space is not a manifold but a coarse graining of it, like the poset formed by a base for the topology ordered under inclusion? Motivated by finding a…
The main goal of this article is to construct some geometric invariants for the topology of the set $\mathcal{F}$ of flat connections on a principal $G$-bundle $P\,\longrightarrow\, M$. Although the characteristic classes of principal…
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 extend the usual notion of parallel transport along a path to triangulated surfaces. A homotopy of paths is lifted into a fibered category with connection and this defines a functor between the fibers above the boundary paths. These…
The existence of Hopf fibrations S^{2N+1}/S^1 = CP^N and S^{4K+3}/S^3 = HP^K allows us to treat the Hilbert space of generic finite-dimensional quantum systems as the total bundle space with respectively $U(1)$ and $SU(2)$ fibers and…
Finding diffeomorphism-invariant observables to characterize the properties of gravity and spacetime at the Planck scale is essential for making progress in quantum gravity. The holonomy and Wilson loop of the Levi-Civita connection are…
Non-relativistic charged particles and strings coupled with abelian gauge fields are quantized in a geometric representation that generalizes the Loop Representation. We consider three models: the string in self-interaction through a…