50 pages; v2: minor changes; v3: exposition improved, one convention in Definition 1.3 changed, accordant changes throughout the whole paper, many details added in Section 2, Section 3.1 is completely rewritten, all main results unchanged, v4: minor changes, final version. Differential Geom. Appl., to appear
Multiplicative bundle gerbes are gerbes over a Lie group which are compatible with the group structure. In this article connections on such bundle gerbes are introduced and studied. It is shown that multiplicative bundle gerbes with connection furnish geometrical constructions of the following objects: smooth central extensions of loop groups, Chern-Simons actions for arbitrary gauge groups, and symmetric bi-branes for WZW models with topological defect lines.
We consider the notion of stable isomorphism of bundle gerbes. It has the consequence that the stable isomorphism classes of bundle gerbes over a manifold M are in bijective correspondence with H^3(M, Z). Stable isomorphism sheds light on the local theory of bundle gerbes and enables us to develop a classifying theory for bundle gerbes using results of Gajer on BC^x bundles.
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 bundle 2-gerbe. To every bundle 2-gerbe on M is associated a class in H^4(M;Z). We define the notion of a bundle 2-gerbe connection and show how this leads to a closed, integral differential 4-form on M which represents the image in real cohomology of the class in H^4(M;Z). Some examples of bundle 2-gerbes are discussed, including the bundle 2-gerbe associated to…
We show that every bundle gerbe on a supermanifold decomposes into a bundle gerbe over the underlying manifold and a 2-form on the supermanifold. This decomposition is not canonical, but is determined by the choice of a projection map to the underlying manifold. Along the way, we prove the familiar cohomological classification theorems for bundle gerbes and bundle gerbes with connection in the context of supermanifolds.
This thesis develops the theory of bundle gerbes and examines a number of useful constructions in this theory. These allow us to gain a greater insight into the structure of bundle gerbes and related objects. Furthermore they naturally lead to some interesting applications in physics.
For each holomorphic vector bundle we construct a holomorphic bundle 2-gerbe that geometrically represents its second Beilinson-Chern class. Applied to the cotangent bundle, this may be regarded as a higher analogue of the canonical line bundle in complex geometry. Moreover, we exhibit the precise relationship between holomorphic and smooth gerbes. For example, we introduce an Atiyah class for gerbes and prove a Koszul-Malgrange type theorem.
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 general, the construction requires a choice, and we can consequently obtain distinct stable isomorphism classes of bundle gerbes with connection and curving over the quotient space. A bundle gerbe naturally arising in Chern-Simons theory provides an example of the reduction.
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.
We consider groupoids in the category of principal bundles, which we call principal bundles (PB) groupoids. Inspired by work by Th. Nikolaus and K. Waldorf, we generalise bundle gerbes over manifolds to bundle gerbes over groupoids and discuss a functorial correspondence between PB groupoids and bundle gerbes over groupoids. From a PB groupoid over a fibre product groupoid, we build a bundle gerbe over another fibre product groupoid. Conversely, from a bundle gerbe over a Lie groupoid, we build a PB groupoid. It has a trivial base and from any PB groupoid with trivial base, we build a bundle g…
We construct a connection and a curving on a bundle gerbe associated with lifting a structure group of a principal bundle to a central extension. The construction is based on certain structures on the bundle, i.e. connections and splittings. The Deligne cohomology class of the lifting bundle gerbe with the connection and with the curving coincides with the obstruction class of the lifting problem with these structures.
Just as $\Cstar$ principal bundles provide a geometric realisation of two-dimensional integral cohomology; gerbes or sheaves of groupoids, provide a geometric realisation of three dimensional integral cohomology through their Dixmier-Douady class. I consider an alternative, related, geometric realisation of three dimensional cohomology called a bundle gerbe. Every bundle gerbe gives rise to a gerbe and most of the well-known examples examples of gerbes are bundle gerbes. I discuss the properties of bundle gerbes, in particular bundle gerbe connections and curvature and their associated Dixmier…
Recently, for a family of ungraded Dirac operators over some space $B$ J. Lott constructed an index gerbe. In the present paper we show (in analogy to the holonomy formula for the determinant bundle in the graded case) that the holonomy of the index gerbe (a priori a hermitean line bundle with connection over the free loop space $LB$) coincides with an adiabatic limit of determinant bundles of an associated family of graded Dirac operators over $LB$.
We define 2-crossed module bundle 2-gerbes related to general Lie 2-crossed modules and discuss their properties. A 2-crossed module bundle 2-gerbe over a manifold is defined in terms of a so called 2-crossed module bundle gerbe, which is a crossed module bundle gerbe equipped with an extra sructure. It is shown that string structures can be described and classified using 2-crossed module bundle 2-gerbes.
We show that the category of abelian gerbes over a smooth manifold is equivalent to a certain category of principal bundles over the free loop space. These principal bundles are equipped with fusion products and are equivariant with respect to thin homotopies between loops. The equivalence is established by a functor called regression, and complements a similar equivalence for bundles and gerbes equipped with connections, derived previously in Part II of this series of papers. The two equivalences provide a complete loop space formulation of the geometry of gerbes; functorial, monoidal, natura…
Usually bundle gerbes are considered as objects of a 2-groupoid, whose 1-morphisms, called stable isomorphisms, are all invertible. I introduce new 1-morphisms which include stable isomorphisms, trivializations and bundle gerbe modules. They fit into the structure of a 2-category of bundle gerbes, and lead to natural definitions of surface holonomy for closed surfaces, surfaces with boundary, and unoriented closed surfaces.
This thesis reviews the theory of bundle gerbes and then examines the higher dimensional notion of a bundle 2-gerbe. The notion of a bundle 2-gerbe connection and 2-curving are introduced and it is shown that there is a class in $H^{4}(M;\Z)$ associated to any bundle 2-gerbe.
In gauge theory, the Faddeev-Mickelsson-Shatashvili anomaly arises as a prolongation problem for the action of the gauge group on a bundle of projective Fock spaces. In this paper, we study this anomaly from the point of view of bundle gerbes and give several equivalent descriptions of the obstruction. These include lifting bundle gerbes with non-trivial structure group bundle and bundle gerbes related to the caloron correspondence.
The use of bundle gerbes and bundle gerbe modules is considered as a replacement for the usual theory of Clifford modules on manifolds that fail to be spin. It is shown that both sides of the Atiyah-Singer index formula for coupled Dirac operators can be given natural interpretations using this language and that the resulting formula is still an identity.
We use bundle gerbes and their connections and curvings to obtain an explicit formula for a de Rham representative of the string class of a loop group bundle. This is related to earlier work on calorons.
This masters thesis reviews bundle gerbe theory and the well-known basic bundle gerbe over SU(n). We introduce the cup product bundle gerbe, and show it is stably isomorphic to the pullback of the basic bundle gerbe by the Weyl map. This result enriches our understanding of the basic bundle gerbe, which has numerous applications in physics.
We study the homotopy aspects of the twisted Chern classes of torsion bundle gerbe modules. Using Sullivan's rational homotopy theory, we realize the twisted Chern classes at the level of classifying spaces. The construction suggests a notion, which we call fractional U-structure serving as a universal framework to study the twisted Chern classes of torsion bundle gerbe modules from the perspective of classifying spaces. Based on this, we introduce and study higher fractional structures on torsion bundle gerbe modules parallel to the higher structures on ordinary vector bundles.
Infinitesimal symmetries of $S^1$-bundle gerbes are modelled with multiplicative vector fields on Lie groupoids. It is shown that a connective structure on a bundle gerbe gives rise to a natural horizontal lift of multiplicative vector fields to the bundle gerbe, and that the 3-curvature presents the obstruction to the horizontal lift being a morphism of Lie 2-algebras. Connection-preserving multiplicative vector fields on a bundle gerbe with connective structure are shown to inherit a natural Lie 2-algebra structure; moreover, this Lie 2-algebra is canonically quasi-isomorphic to the Poisson-…
Let $(P, Y)$ be a bundle gerbe over a fibre bundle $Y \to M$. We show that if $M$ is simply-connected and the fibres of $Y \to M$ are connected and finite-dimensional then the Dixmier-Douady class of $(P, Y)$ is torsion. This corrects and extends an earlier result of the first author.
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 constructed an irreducible Clifford module bundle, a spinor bundle over the smooth free loop space of the manifold. First, a Clifford algebra bundle over the loop space is constructed from the vector bundle. A polarization class bundle is constructed, choosing continuously over each point of the loop space a polarization class of Lagrangian subspaces of the comple…
We generalize the notion of parallel transport along paths for abelian bundles to parallel transport along surfaces for abelian gerbes using an embedded Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) approach. We show both for bundles and gerbes with connection that there is a one-to-one correspondence between their local description in terms of locally-defined functions and forms and their non-local description in terms of a suitable class of embedded TQFT's.
We develop the theory of simplicial extensions for bundle gerbes and their characteristic classes with a view towards studying descent problems and equivariance for bundle gerbes. Equivariant bundle gerbes are important in the study of orbifold sigma models. We consider in detail two examples: the basic bundle gerbe on a unitary group and a string structure for a principal bundle. We show that the basic bundle gerbe is equivariant for the conjugation action and calculate its characteristic class; we show also that a string structure gives rise to a bundle gerbe which is equivariant for a natur…
We introduce the notion of a general cup product bundle gerbe and use it to define the Weyl bundle gerbe on T x SU(n)/T. The Weyl map from T x SU(n)/T to SU(n) is then used to show that the pullback of the basic bundle gerbe on SU(n) defined by the second two authors is stably isomorphic to the Weyl bundle gerbe as SU(n)-equivariant bundle gerbes. Both bundle gerbes come equipped with connections and curvings and by considering the holonomy of these we show that these bundle gerbes are not D-stably isomorphic.
This paper exhibits equivalences of 2-stacks between certain models of $\mathbb{S}^1$-gerbes and differential 3-cocycles. We focus primarily on the model of Dixmier-Douady bundles, and provide an equivalence between the 2-stack of Dixmier-Douady bundles and the 2-stack of differential 3-cocycles of height 1, where the 'height' is related to the presence of connective structure. Differential 3-cocycles of height 2 (resp. height 3) are shown to be equivalent to $\mathbb{S}^1$-bundle gerbes with connection (resp. with connection and curving). These equivalences extend to the equivariant setting o…
The notion of a gerbe with connection is conveniently reformulated in terms of the simplicial deRham complex. In particular the usual Chern-Weil and Chern-Simons theory is well adapted to this framework and rather easily gives rise to `characteristic gerbes' associated to families of bundles and connections. In turn this gives invariants for families of foliated bundles. A special case is the Quillen line bundle associated to families of flat SU(2)-bundles
Hermitian bundle gerbes with connection are geometric objects for which a notion of surface holonomy can be defined for closed oriented surfaces. We systematically introduce bundle gerbes by closing the pre-stack of trivial bundle gerbes under descent. Inspired by structures arising in a representation theoretic approach to rational conformal field theories, we introduce geometric structure that is appropriate to define surface holonomy in more general situations: Jandl gerbes for unoriented surfaces, D-branes for surfaces with boundaries, and bi-branes for surfaces with defect lines.
We develop the theory of Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbes and multiplicative bundle gerbes associated to any principal $G$-bundle with connection and a class in $H^4(BG, \ZZ)$ for a compact semi-simple Lie group $G$. The Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbe realises differential geometrically the Cheeger-Simons invariant. We apply these notions to refine the Dijkgraaf-Witten correspondence between three dimensional Chern-Simons functionals and Wess-Zumino-Witten models associated to the group $G$. We do this by introducing a lifting to the level of bundle gerbes of the natural map from $H^4(BG, \ZZ)$ to $H…
We present a review of bundle gerbes, emphasizing their relations to Lie groups. Indeed, compact Lie groups do not only carry the structure of a Riemannian manifold, but also canonical families of bundle gerbes. We recall the construction of these bundle gerbes and their relation to loop groups. We discuss several algebraic structures for bundle gerbes with connection such as Jandl structures, gerbe modules and gerbe bimodules, and indicate their applications to Wess-Zumino terms in two-dimensional field theories.
The notion of a higher bundle gerbe is introduced to give a geometric realization of the higher degree integral cohomology of certain manifolds. We consider examples using the infinite dimensional spaces arising in gauge theories.
An introduction to the theory of bundle gerbes and their relationship to Hitchin-Chatterjee gerbes is presented. Topics covered are connective structures, triviality and stable isomorphism as well as examples and applications.
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 formalism and in local coordinates. These are the gauge fields needed for the construction of Yang-Mills theories with 2-form gauge potential.
We discuss nonabelian bundle gerbes and their differential geometry using simplicial methods. Associated to any crossed module there is a simplicial group NC, the nerve of the 1-category defined by the crossed module and its geometric realization |NC|. Equivalence classes of principal bundles with structure group |NC| are shown to be one-to-one with stable equivalence classes of what we call crossed module gerbes bundle gerbes. We can also associate to a crossed module a 2-category C'. Then there are two equivalent ways how to view classifying spaces of NC-bundles and hence of |NC|-bundles and…
Many bundle gerbes constructed in practice are either infinite-dimensional, or finite-dimensional but built using submersions that are far from being fibre bundles. Murray and Stevenson proved that gerbes on simply-connected manifolds, built from finite-dimensional fibre bundles with connected fibres, always have a torsion $DD$-class. In this note I prove an analogous result for a wide class of gerbes built from principal bundles, relaxing the requirements on the fundamental group of the base and the connected components of the fibre, allowing both to be nontrivial. This has consequences for p…
We present a construction of a 2-Hilbert space of sections of a bundle gerbe, a suitable candidate for a prequantum 2-Hilbert space in higher geometric quantisation. We introduce a direct sum on the morphism categories in the 2-category of bundle gerbes and show that these categories are cartesian monoidal and abelian. Endomorphisms of the trivial bundle gerbe, or higher functions, carry the structure of a rig-category, which acts on generic morphism categories of bundle gerbes. We continue by presenting a categorification of the hermitean metric on a hermitean line bundle. This is achieved by…
In this paper, we construct the index bundle gerbe of a family of self-adjoint Dirac-type operators, refining a construction of Segal. In a special case, we construct a geometric bundle gerbe called the caloron bundle gerbe, which comes with a natural connection and curving, and show that it is isomorphic to the analytically constructed index bundle gerbe. We apply these constructions to certain moduli spaces associated to compact Riemann surfaces, constructing on these moduli spaces, natural bundle gerbes with connection and curving, whose 3-curvature represent Dixmier-Douady classes that are…
We study $S^1$-bundles and $S^1$-gerbes over differentiable stacks in terms of Lie groupoids, and construct Chern classes and Dixmier-Douady classes in terms of analogues of connections and curvature.
We consider the construction of the basic bundle gerbe on SU(n) introduced by Meinrenken and show that it extends to a range of groups with unitary actions on a Hilbert space including U(n), diagonal tori and the Banach Lie group of unitary operators differing from the identity by an element of a Schatten ideal. In all these cases we give an explicit connection and curving on the basic bundle gerbe and calculate the real Dixmier-Douady class. Extensive use is made of the holomorphic functional calculus for operators on a Hilbert space.
This is a mostly self-contained survey article about bundle gerbes and some of their recent applications in geometry, field theory, and quantisation. We cover the definition of bundle gerbes with connection and their morphisms, and explain the classification of bundle gerbes with connection in terms of differential cohomology. We then survey how the surface holonomy of bundle gerbes combines with their transgression line bundles to yield a smooth bordism-type field theory. Finally, we exhibit the use of bundle gerbes in geometric quantisation of 2-plectic as well as 1- and 2-shifted symplectic…
In this short paper, we will review the proposal of a correspondence between the doubled geometry of Double Field Theory and the higher geometry of bundle gerbes. Double Field Theory is T-duality covariant formulation of the supergravity limit of String Theory, which generalises Kaluza-Klein theory by unifying metric and Kalb-Ramond field on a doubled-dimensional space. In light of the proposed correspondence, this doubled geometry is interpreted as an atlas description of the higher geometry of bundle gerbes. In this sense, Double Field Theory can be interpreted as a field theory living on th…
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 group of a principal bundle. The second is the transgression of gerbes to loop spaces, initiated by Brylinski and McLaughlin and with recent contributions of the author. Combining these two aspects, we obtain a new formulation of lifting problems in terms of geometry on the loop space. Most prominently, our formulation explains the relation between (complex) s…
The Wess-Zumino term in two-dimensional conformal field theory is best understood as a surface holonomy of a bundle gerbe. We define additional structure for a bundle gerbe that allows to extend the notion of surface holonomy to unoriented surfaces. This provides a candidate for the Wess-Zumino term for WZW models on unoriented surfaces. Our ansatz reproduces some results known from the algebraic approach to WZW models.
Our main aim is to associate a holonomy Lie groupoid to the connective structure of an abelian gerbe. The construction has analogies with a procedure for the holonomy Lie groupoid of a foliation, in using a locally Lie groupoid and a globalisation procedure. We show that path connections and 2-holonomy on line bundles may be formulated using the notion of a connection pair on a double category, due to Brown-Spencer, but now formulated in terms of double groupoids using the thin fundamental groupoids introduced by Caetano-Mackaay-Picken. To obtain a locally Lie groupoid to which globalisation a…
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 between interesting recent developments. Prominent partial results we prove are a bijection between continuous and smooth non-abelian cohomology, and an explicit equivalence between bundle gerbes and principal 2-bundles as 2-stacks.
We construct a prequantum 2-Hilbert space for any line bundle gerbe whose Dixmier-Douady class is torsion. Analogously to usual prequantisation, this 2-Hilbert space has the category of sections of the line bundle gerbe as its underlying 2-vector space. These sections are obtained as certain morphism categories in Waldorf's version of the 2-category of line bundle gerbes. We show that these morphism categories carry a monoidal structure under which they are semisimple and abelian. We introduce a dual functor on the sections, which yields a closed structure on the morphisms between bundle gerbe…
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 with respect to triples of paths. The equivalence is established by explicit functors in both directions: transgression and regression. We describe applications to geometric lifting problems and loop group extensions.
Let $G$ be a Lie group and $G\to\Aut(G)$ be the canonical group homomorphism induced by the adjoint action of a group on itself. We give an explicit description of a 1-1 correspondence between Morita equivalence classes of, on the one hand, principal 2-group $[G\to\Aut(G)]$-bundles over Lie groupoids and, on the other hand, $G$-extensions of Lie groupoids (i.e.\ between principal $[G\to\Aut(G)]$-bundles over differentiable stacks and $G$-gerbes over differentiable stacks). This approach also allows us to identify $G$-bound gerbes and $[Z(G)\to 1]$-group bundles over differentiable stacks, wher…
This paper generalizes Bismut's equivariant Chern character to the setting of abelian gerbes. In particular, associated to an abelian gerbe with connection, an equivariantly closed differential form is constructed on the space of maps of a torus into the manifold. These constructions are made explicit using a new local version of the higher Hochschild complex, resulting in differential forms given by iterated integrals. Connections to two dimensional topological field theories are indicated. Similarly, this local higher Hochschild complex is used to calculate the 2-holonomy of an abelian gerbe…
We study bundle gerbes on manifolds $M$ that carry an action of a connected Lie group $G$. We show that these data give rise to a smooth 2-group extension of $G$ by the smooth 2-group of hermitean line bundles on $M$. This 2-group extension classifies equivariant structures on the bundle gerbe, and its non-triviality poses an obstruction to the existence of equivariant structures. We present a new global approach to the parallel transport of a bundle gerbe with connection, and use it to give an alternative construction of this smooth 2-group extension in terms of a homotopy-coherent version of…
The aim of this talk is to explain how symmetry breaking in a quantum field theory problem leads to a study of projective bundles, Dixmier-Douady classes, and associated gerbes. A gerbe manifests itself in different equivalent ways. Besides the cohomological description as a DD class, it can be defined in terms of a family of local line bundles or as a prolongation problem for an (infinite-dimensional) principal bundle, with the fiber consisting of (a subgroup of) projective unitaries in a Hilbert space. The prolongation aspect is directly related to the appearance of central extensions of (br…
Given a central extension of Lie groups, we study the classification problem of lifting the structure group together with a given connection. For reductive structure groups we introduce a new connective structure on the lifting gerbe associated to this problem. Our main result classifies all connections on the central extension of a given principal bundle. In particular, we find that admissible connections are in one-to-one correspondence with parallel trivializations of the lifting gerbe. Moreover, we prove a vanishing result for Neeb's obstruction classes for finite-dimensional Lie groups.
Given a bundle gerbe on a compact smooth manifold or, more generally, on a compact étale 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 projective modules over an Azumaya algebra on $M$. This result can be seen as an equivariant Serre-Swan theorem for twisted vector bundles.
We discuss an approach to quantum gerbes over quantum groups in terms of q-deformation of transition functions for a loop group bundle. The case of the quantum group SUq(2) is treated in some detail.
