Flat principal 2-group bundles and flat string structures

Abstract manifolds and fiber bundles (category-theoretic aspects) (18F15) Presheaves and sheaves, stacks, descent conditions (category-theoretic aspects) (18F20) Connections of group theory with homological algebra and category theory (20J99) Topological groupoids (including differentiable and Lie groupoids) (22A22) Elliptic cohomology (55N34) Classification of fiber spaces or bundles in algebraic topology (55R15) Generalizations of fiber spaces and bundles in algebraic topology (55R65)

Review text

This paper aims to develop an explicit presentation of the bicategory \(\mathsf{Bun}_{\mathcal{G}}(X)\) of flat principal \(\mathcal{G}\)-bundles over a differentiable stack \(X\) for \(\mathcal{G}\) a weak 2-group. Flat \(\mathcal{G}\)-bundles in the sense of this paper give examples of principal \(\mathcal{G}\)-bundles in the sense of [\textit{C. J. Schommer-Pries}, Geom. Topol. 15, No. 2, 609--676 (2011; Zbl 1216.22005)].\N\NUltimately, the authors hope for a generalization of the main results for arbitrary categorical central extensions in the bicategory of smooth 2-groups, so that they present the following conjecture.\N\NConjecture. For a smooth categorical central extension\N\[\N1\rightarrow\mathrm{pt}//A\rightarrow\mathcal{G}\rightarrow G\rightarrow1\N\]\Nof a Lie group \(G\) classified by \([\alpha] \in\mathrm{H}_{\mathrm{SM}}^{3}\left( G;A\right) \), a \(\mathcal{G}\)-bundle on a smooth stack \(X\) is equivalent to a \(G\)-bundle \(P\rightarrow X\) with a trivialization of the 2-gerbe \(\lambda_{P,\alpha}\rightarrow X\) determined by \(P\) and the Segal-Mitchison cocycle \(\alpha\).\N\NThis paper is the first in a program of the authors to establish the above conjecture. The authors anticipate that this will reveal the correct notion of \textit{string connections} on a \(\mathrm{String}_{n}\)-principal bundle, which is an important step in the Stolz-Teichner program to construct a geometric model for the string orientation of TMF [\textit{S. Stolz} and \textit{P. Teichner}, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 308, 247--343 (2004; Zbl 1107.55004)].\N\NThe flatness assumptions of this paper simplify some of the stacky geometry expected in the above conjecture, while also retaining the anticipated categorical complexities of the complete picture. Particularly, studying \(\mathcal{G}\)-bundles for a weak 2-group \(\mathcal{G}\) reveals that the nontrivial associator \ changes the flavor of the geometry rather dramatically, when compared to bundles to strict 2-groups. Similar behavior must persist for principal bundles for arbitrary smooth 2-groups.\N\NFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1561.00043].

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