Holonomy and parallel transport for abelian gerbes (Q1851242)

The authors study \(U(1)\)-gerbes with connections and establish for simply connected manifolds a one-to-one correspondence between such gerbes with connections and their holonomies. In this event the holonomy is a group morphism from the thin second homotopy group defined by Caetano and the second author to \(U(1)\). The paper could serve as a comprehensive introduction to the theory of gerbes and connections on them.