TQFT's and gerbes (Q1880630)

The aim of the paper under review is to generalize the notion of parallel transport along paths for abelian bundles, as for cylinders in [\textit{M. Mackaay} and \textit{R. Picken}, Adv. Math. 170, No. 2, 287--339 (2002; Zbl 1034.53051)], to parallel transport along general surfaces with boundary for abelian gerbes, using an embedded Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) approach. The notion of TQFT was introduced by \textit{E. Witten} [Commun. Math. Phys. 117, No. 3, 353--386 (1988; Zbl 0656.53078)], based on Atiyah and Segal's works. The general framework for TQFT and the related constructions used in the paper are based on the author's and \textit{Semião}'s preprint [A classical approach to TQFT's, ArXiv:math.QA/0212310]. One proves that, both for bundles and gerbes with connection, there is a one to one correspondence between their local description in terms of locally-defined functions and their non-local description in terms of a suitable class of embedded TQFT's. Concretely, one defines rank-1, embedded, 1 and 2-dimensional TQFT's and one proves the equivalences of their classes with some bundles with connections.