Transgression to loop spaces and its inverse. III: Gerbes and thin fusion bundles (Q1759383)

This is the third and last part of a series of papers by the author [Cah. Topol. Géom. Différ. Catég. 53, No. 3, 162--210 (2012; Zbl 1277.53045); ``Transgression to loop spaces and its inverse. II. Gerbes and fusion bundles with connection'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1004.0031}] providing a complete formulation of the geometry of abelian bundles and gerbes over a smooth manifold \(M\) in terms of its free loop space \(LM\). The paper is self-contained. It is proved that the category of abelian gerbes over \(M\) is equivalent to a certain category of principal bundles over \(LM\). These principal bundles are equipped with fusion products and are equivalent with respect to thin homotopies between loops. Then, a complete loop space formulation of the geometry of gerbes is obtained. Finally, the author discusses an application to lifting problems, which provides in particular a loop space formulation of spin structures, complex spin structures and spin connections is discussed.