Third group cohomology and gerbes over Lie groups (Q314031)

A gerbe over some topological space \(X\) is a principal bundle whose fiber is the projective unitary group of some Hilbert space \(\mathcal{H}\). The topological classification of gerbes over \(X\) is given by the third integral cohomology \(H^3(X, \mathbb{Z})\). In numerous situations the integral cohomology is closely related to other definitions of cohomology, especially for smooth spaces the locally smooth cohomology. For gerbes constructed by an Abelian extension \[ 1 \longrightarrow A \longrightarrow \widehat{N} \longrightarrow N \longrightarrow 1\,, \] the authors study the above relation for extensions \[ 1 \longrightarrow N \longrightarrow G \longrightarrow H \longrightarrow 1\,. \] For vanishing smooth cohomology \(H^1_s(N,A)\) there exists a transgression map \(H^2_s(N,A) \longrightarrow H^3_s(H,A^N)\), where \(A^N\) denotes subgroup of \(N\)-invariant elements in \(A\). If \(A\) is the \(G\)-module of smooth maps from \(G\) to the unit circle \(S^1\) then this construction can be identified with a group of based gauge transformations. Three helpful appendices summarize \textit{Central extensions of smooth based loop groups} (Appendix A), \textit{Fock space construction of gerbes over \(G/Z\)} for a cyclic group \(Z\) (Appendix B) and \textit{Extensions of smooth crossed modules} (Appendix C).