Unoriented WZW models and holonomy of bundle gerbes (Q2460050)

To become a conformally invariant theory, the Langrangian description of a Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) model needs an additional term, known as the Wess-Zumino term. Its nature as a surface holonomy has been identified in [\textit{O. Alvarez}, Commun. Math. Phys. 100, 279--309 (1985; Zbl 0612.55009) and \textit{K. Gawȩdzki}, Topological actions in two-dimensional quantum field theories, in: Non-perturbative quantum field theory, London, Plenum Press (1988)], while the most natural differential-geometric object for the latter turned out to be a Hermitian \(U(1)\) bundle gerbe with connection and curving [\textit{A. L. Carey, S. Johnson} and \textit{M. K. Murray}, J. Geom. Phys. 52, No. 2, 186--216 (2004; Zbl 1092.81055)]. To extend the notion of surface holonomy to unoriented surfaces, the authors introduce an additional structure, called bundle gerbes with Jandl structure. A Jandl structure relates, roughly speaking, the pull back of the gerbe data under an involution of the base manifold to the local data of the dual gerbe. It is shown that this structure allows indeed an extension of the definition of the usual gerbe holonomy from oriented to unoriented surfaces. Furthermore, formulas for these holonomies are derived in local data which generalize known expressions for oriented surfaces. These results are finally applied to define WZW models on unoriented surfaces.