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March 16, 2005

Talk at IIASS: Nonabelian Strings

Posted by Urs Schreiber

Next week the Istituto Internazionale per gli alti Studi Scientifici hosts the conference Problemi Attuali di Fisica Teorica in Vietri sul Mare (Italy). As I have mentioned before, I’ll give a talk on ‘nonabelian strings’ concerned with
2-bundles, 2-connections and 2-holonomy and the relation to nonabelian gerbes.

Here are the slides: VietriTalk.ps.

(Special thanks go once again to Eric Forgy for having provided the picture that I display on the title slide.)

Here is the abstract:

Intersections of membranes with stacks of M5-branes are expected to give rise to a dimensional generalization of nonabelian gauge theory from point particles to strings. This can be described in the language of nonabelian gerbes. A gerbe is a generalization of the concept of a sheaf of sections of a fiber bundle obtained by a method known as categorification. Applying the same method to the more direct description of bundles in terms of projection maps and local trivializations yields the concept of a 2-bundle. We describe the theory of 2-bundles in general, how gerbes are obtained from 2-bundles and how global nonabelian surface holonomy can be defined using 2-bundles. This should play a role both for action principles of nonabelian strings as well as for elliptic cohomology.

Posted at March 16, 2005 3:29 PM UTC

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2 Comments & 2 Trackbacks

Re: Talk at IIASS: Nonabelian Strings

(Special thanks go once again to Eric Forgy for having provided the picture that I display on the title slide.)

Nice :) Speaking of the cover figure, there seems to be an extraneous “X” in there next to one of the arrows that is not part of the original figure and is not in the same figure on a later slide.

Artists are sensitive about these kinds of things ;)

Posted by: Eric on March 17, 2005 12:59 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Talk at IIASS: Nonabelian Strings

That’s right, this X is a remnant of a test I did and I forgot to remove it. I’ll do so as soon as I am home again.

BTW, Eric, maybe you could do me yet another small favor. I am currently forced to use an awkward public internet terminal in a hotel. For some reason it does not allow me to use REPLY in Yahoo mail. Since it is possibly of importance, could you maybe be so kind a send a brief note to John Baez telling him that ‘I suggest that we let the elements of P_0 G have sitting instant at both endpoints.’

Sounds weird? This is for a new paper which is almost done. I’ll tell you what this message is about when it’s on the archive.

Posted by: Urs Schreiber on March 19, 2005 8:39 AM | Permalink | Reply to this
Read the post Problemi Attuali di Fisica Teorica 06
Weblog: The String Coffee Table
Excerpt: This year's meeting in Vietri.
Tracked: February 9, 2006 12:40 PM
Read the post Waldorf on Transport Functors and Connections on Gerbes
Weblog: The n-Category Café
Excerpt: A talk on parallel 2-transport.
Tracked: September 6, 2008 4:33 PM