A theory of bundles over posets (Q957977)

In the study of spacetime manifold in quantum field theory, one encounters a suitable base for its topology under inclusion. It is then natural to ask to what extent the topological data of the spacetime manifold are encoded in the partially ordered set. In this paper, the authors investigate this question for the first locally constant cohomology group of the manifold and use the notion of bundles, connections and curvature over the poset derived from the base for the topology of the manifold to derive a positive answer. The main tools used is the notion of net bundles over a poset. The authors also introduce the Čech cohomology of a poset and express it in terms of the net cohomology of the poset. As a particular case of the poset of open, contractible subsets they obtain the locally constant cohomology of the manifold.