Questions tagged [gerbes]

"Gerbe" is a construct in homological algebra and topology. They can be seen as a generalization of principal bundles to the setting of 2-categories. "Gerbe" is a French (and archaic English) word that literally means wheat sheaf. Gerbes were introduced by Jean Giraud (Giraud 1971) following ideas of Alexandre Grothendieck as a tool for non-commutative cohomology in degree 2.

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Phenomena of gerbes

What is your favourite example of Gerbes? I would like to know Where do we find Gerbes in "nature"? The examples could vary from String theory to Galois theory. For example my favourite examples of ...
tttbase's user avatar
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Why do gerbes live in H^2?

Line bundles on a scheme $X$ live in $H^1(X,O_X^*)$, where $O_{X}^{*}$ is the sheaf of invertible functions. If $X$ is noetherian separated, then we can think of this $H^1$ to be Čech cohmology w.r.t....
Qfwfq's user avatar
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19 votes
3 answers
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Second nonabelian group cohomology: cocycles vs. gerbes

In 1965 Jean Giraud published two Comptes Rendus notes titled "Cohomologie non abélienne", and in 1971 he published a book with the same title. In 1966 Tonny A. Springer's paper "Nonabelian $H^2$ in ...
Mikhail Borovoi's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
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Algebraic versus Analytic Brauer Group

Let $X$ be a smooth projective algebraic variety over $\mathbb{C}$. Then I think that someone (Serre?) showed that the Cohomological Etale Brauer Group agrees with the torsion part of the Analytic ...
Oren Ben-Bassat's user avatar
17 votes
5 answers
2k views

What do gerbes and complex powers of line bundles have to do with each other?

We all know how to take integer tensor powers of line bundles. I claim that one should be able to also take fractional or even complex powers of line bundles. These might not be line bundles, but ...
Ben Webster's user avatar
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16 votes
4 answers
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References on Gerbes

I am looking for some references related to gerbes and their differential geometry. Almost every article I have seen that is related to gerbes there is a common reference that is Giraud's book ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
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1 answer
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Are deformations of a scheme some kind of a "derived gerbe" under the cotangent complex?

(This is probably a very naive question. My understanding of the cotangent complex is quite vague.) Let me first recall the picture for deformations of a smooth morphism: If $f:X_0\to S_0$ is a ...
Piotr Achinger's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
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Is the first differential Pontryagin class a morphism of stacks?

In Cech Cocycles for Characteristic Classes, Jean-Luc Brylinski and Dennis McLaughlin provide explicit formulas for Cech cocycles for characteristic classes of real and complex vector bundles, and ...
domenico fiorenza's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
1k views

Are bundle gerbes bundles of algebras?

The category of line bundles (possibly with connection) on a smooth manifold M can be defined in two different ways: The first definition uses transition functions that satisfy a cocycle condition (...
Dmitri Pavlov's user avatar
15 votes
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What is an example of a non-abelian gerbe with connection?

Abelian gerbes can arise from obstructions to lifting a principal $C$-bundle to a principal $B$-bundle given some central extension $0\to A \to B \to C \to 0$ or as a representative of a cohomology ...
cheyne's user avatar
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14 votes
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Gabber's proof of Br' = Br for quasiprojective schemes

In a note by deJong showing the cohomological and ordinary Brauer groups coincide for separated quasicompact schemes with ample line bundle, it is mentioned that Gabber had an unpublished proof of the ...
David Roberts's user avatar
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13 votes
3 answers
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Geometric models for 2-gerbes

One can think of a complex line bundle as a geometric model for an integral cohomology class of degree 2. Similarly, a locally-trivial bundle of $C^*$-algebras with fiber B(H) (the $C^*$-algebra of ...
Anton Kapustin's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
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Recovering classical Tannaka duality from Lurie's version for geometric stacks

In Lurie's paper Tannaka Duality for Geometric Stacks, it is essentially shown that specifying a morphism of geometric objects $$ f \colon X \to Y$$ is equivalent to giving a corresponding pullback ...
Will's user avatar
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11 votes
1 answer
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Gerbes over finite fields

Let $k$ be a field with algebraic closure $\bar{k}$. Recall that a gerbe over $k$ is an algebraic stack $\mathcal{G}$ over $k$ such that the groupoid $\mathcal{G}(\bar{k})$ is connected. We say that $\...
Daniel Loughran's user avatar
11 votes
0 answers
997 views

What is there in the book Cohomologie non abélienne by Jean Giraud

These days I am trying to understand about stacks and gerbes. Most of the articles that has something to do with gerbes cite this work Cohomologie non abélienne by Jean Giraud. I do not read the ...
9 votes
3 answers
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Gerbes and Stacks

The definition of a gerbe on a smooth manifold that I know is that - after fixing an open cover $U_i$, a gerbe consists of the data of line bundles $L_{ij}$ on two-fold-intersections $U_{ij}$, ...
Matthias Ludewig's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
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Bundle Gerbes as Characteristic Classes

Perhaps this is a bit naïve, but I was wondering if it possible to (at least formally) represent Bundle Gerbes as Characteristic Classes. Disclaimer: My understanding of Bundle Gerbes is limited to ...
Tarun Chitra's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
744 views

Giraud's proper base change for Gerbes - Elimination of Noetherian hypotheses

I was looking through Giraud's book Cohomologie Non-abelienne, and there is a very nice theorem that Giraud proves in the Noetherian case (Cohomologie Non-Abelienne VII.2.2): Let $f:X\to Y$ be a ...
Harry Gindi's user avatar
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Geometrizing the Third Cohomology of a Complex Lie Group

If $G_\mathbb{C}$ is a simply-connected simple complex Lie group, theorem 5.4.10 of Brylinski's "Loop Spaces, Characteristic Classes, and Geometric Quantization" claims that there is a natural $\...
Daniel Litt's user avatar
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8 votes
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Gerbes for a cyclic group. (or maybe G_m too)

Let μn be the group scheme of n-th roots of unity. If X is a scheme and L is a line bundle on X, then I can construct a μn-gerbe Y over X by letting the S-points of Y be a S-point of X, a line ...
Peter McNamara's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
381 views

Gerbes on the multiplicative group

Let $k$ be an arbitrary field with absolute Galois group $\Gamma$. The group $\text{Hom}(\Gamma,\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z})$ injects into $H^2(\mathbb{A}^1 \setminus \{ 0 \},\mathbb{G}_m)$, as one can see ...
Justin Campbell's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
188 views

Closed immersion → Pro-open immersion factorization for residual gerbes

Let $X$ be a quasi-separated algebraic stack. Then it is a theorem of Rydh that every point $x$ in $X$ admits a residual gerbe. More or less, the construction proceeds by first taking the closure ...
Harry Gindi's user avatar
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"Gerbes" in the cobordism theory

In a lecture I attended today, I heard the use of gerbes in the cobordism theory. Previously, I use cobordism theory, but I never encounter the term "gerbes" when I work on bordism or cobordism group ...
wonderich's user avatar
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What's a good reference about gerbes and bands?

I've seen several papers that I would like to read that use the language of gerbes and bands. The wiki page on gerbes is useful, but doesn't even contain the word 'band', so I'm left confused even ...
7 votes
1 answer
368 views

Fiberwise criterion for a stack to be a gerbe

Let $f:X\to Y$ be a morphism of algebraic stacks. If the geometric fibres of $f$ are algebraic spaces, then $f$ is representable by algebraic spaces. I'm wondering about analogues of this fiberwise ...
Marci Senf's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
947 views

Understanding the definition of $G$-gerbe

In Introduction to Differentiable Stacks Gregory Ginot defines a $G$-gerbe as the following. Let $G$ be a Lie group. A $G$-gerbe over a stack $\mathcal{C}$ is a gerbe over stack $\mathcal{D}\...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
244 views

Weak 2-groups and non-abelian gerbe over a manifold

In literature, a strict 2-group is defined as a group object in the category of categories or groupoids. It has many well known equivalent descriptions viz: 1. A strict monoidal category in which all ...
Adittya Chaudhuri's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
911 views

How should one think about the band of a gerbe?

Let $X$ be a topological space. Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a fibered category over $X$; seen as an assignment of a category $\mathcal{F}(U)$ for each open $U\subseteq X$. A fibered catgeory $\mathcal{F}$...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
320 views

Cocycle description of gerbes

I am trying to understand cocycle description of gerbes as in https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0611317.pdf. Let $\mathcal{P}$ be a gerbe on a topological space $X$ i.e., $\mathcal{P}$ is a stack over ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
333 views

Categorical formalism for higher non-abelian group cohomology / obstruction theory for gerbes?

I'm sure this is very well known but I haven't found any references for this searching the internet so hence the question: What's the neat abstract framework for obstruction theory for non-abelian ...
Saal Hardali's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
593 views

Connection on a Principal bundle and transition functions, as in Hitchin's notes

This is along the lines of this question Gerbes are not just topological objects: we can do differential geometry with them too. We shall next describe what a connection on a gerbe is. To begin with, ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
352 views

Residual gerbe and field of moduli

I am studying residual gerbes from Laumon Moret-Bailly and I would like to know if the residue field of the residue gerbe has the following property. I am a beginner in this subject so I find ...
FrankJ112's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
198 views

Geometric interpretation of $\mathbb{C}^{\times}$-gerbes

Let $X$ be a (nice enough, e.g. smooth etc.) variety over the complex numbers, and let $\mathcal{G}$ be a gerbe on $X$. Then $\mathcal{G}$ is classified by a cohomology class in $\alpha \in H^2(X, \...
Exit path's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
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Roadmap to understand gerbe in the sense of Lurie’s Higher Topos Theory

Definition $7.2.2.20$ : Let $\mathfrak{X} $ be an $\infty$-topos. An $n$-gerbe on $\mathfrak{X}$ is an object in $\mathfrak{X}$ which is $n$-connective and $n$-truncated. Above is the definition of ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
398 views

Differential Geometry of (Non-Abelian) Gerbes in the language of Brylinski

Context In an effort to have a definition for connection on a non-abelian gerbe, in the style of Brylinski, I am reading Breen and Messing's Differential Geometry of Gerbes [BM]. It seems that there ...
cheyne's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
356 views

Is a gerbe over a manifold is a special case of a gerbe over a stack?

There is a notion of Gerbe over a Manifold and a notion of Gerbe over a stack. Given a manifold $M$, there is a way to associate a stack $\underline{M}$ with it and this gives an embedding of ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
247 views

Smooth algebraic stacks with precisely two $\mathbb C$-objects

In my quest of "understanding" stacks, I recently tried to figure out the structure of a smooth algebraic stack of finite type $\mathcal X$ over $\mathbb C$ with affine diagonal and precisely one $\...
Christian's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
215 views

K theoretic pushforward along gerbes

I have a nontrivial gerbe $\pi : \mathscr{G} \to X$ banded by a cyclic group $G = \mathbb{Z}/r$. I'm working over $\mathbb{C}$. I want to describe $\pi_\ast$ and relate the fundamental class $[\...
Leo Herr's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
360 views

Kottwitz global gerbes

I've been trying to understand global gerbes constructed by Kottwitz in $B(G)$ for all local and global fields (arXiv:1401.5728). Scholze explained in $p$-adic geometry (arXiv:1712.03708) why I would ...
curious math guy's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
234 views

Sections of gerbes that can "vanish"

The notion of bundle gerbe is a categorification of line bundles/principal $U(1)$-bundles, and comes in two presentations: a linear version (with $Line_\mathbb{C}$-enriched underlying groupoid) and a ...
David Roberts's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
344 views

holonomy of connection on gerbes

I am reading this notes of Hitchin to understand about gerbes. He defines gerbe by giving a collection of $2$ cocycles $g_{\alpha\beta\gamma}:U_\alpha\cap U_\beta\cap U_\gamma\rightarrow S^1$ with ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
233 views

Crossed modules in context of gerbes

Question : How does Crossed modules comes into the set up of gerbes. I am reading notes on 1- and 2-gerbes by Lawrence Breen. Once he defines torsors, he introduces notion of crossed modules. It was ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
142 views

Connections on bundle gerbes from cocycle data

I am reading a 2007 article of Bressler et al. on deformation quantization of gerbes. In the article, the authors state that a gerbe on a manifold is defined using certain two-cocycles $c_{ijk}$ ...
Hollis Williams's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
266 views

Are there any non-trivial $G$-gerbes over the analytic space $\mathbb C$

Does there exist a finite (abstract) group $G$ and a non-trivial $G$-gerbe $\mathcal X\to \mathbb C$, where we work in the category of analytic stacks. My guess is that $G$-gerbes for $G$ an abelian ...
Marci Senf's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
249 views

Examples of of gerbe over stacks in terms of manifolds

I am looking for some examples of gerbes over stacks (as defined in Understanding definition of gerbe over a stack) that comes from manifolds. Let $M$ be a manifold then $\underline{M}$ is a stack ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
542 views

Understanding definition of gerbe over a stack

I am reading Differentiable Stacks and Gerbes by Kai Behrend and Ping Xu. They define gerbe over a stack as follows. Let $\mathfrak{X}$ be a differentiable stack. An $\mathfrak{S}$-stack $\...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
353 views

Twisting an object P by an H-Torsor I

I am reading Brylinski's Loop Spaces, Characteristic Classes, and Geometric Quantization. The Statement Let $C$ be a gerbe on a space $X$ with "abelian" band $H$, $f: Y \to X$ a local ...
cheyne's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
242 views

Automorphisms of Frobenius liftings and degeneration of the Hodge-de Rham spectral sequence

I am still studying Deligne and Illusie's paper (https://eudml.org/doc/143480), and I am again stuck, this time on pages 262/263. Assume $X\longrightarrow S$ is a smooth morphism of $\mathbb{F}_{p}$-...
The Thin Whistler's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
440 views

Prerequisites for understanding algebraic geometry of “algebraic gerbes”

I am trying to learn about algebraic geometry of gerbes. I am familiar with set up of gerbes in the case of differential geometry. Though there is some similarity between differentiable gerbes and ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
105 views

Concerning the definition of a 2-crossed module

Question: Is there some generalization of the definition of crossed-module which appropriately fits into the holonomy-considerations I am interested in and has, as an example, the generalization of ...
cheyne's user avatar
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