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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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
2 votes
1 answer
314 views

gluing gerbes over a spectrum of a field

A theorem of Giraud says that gerbes over a scheme $X$ bounded by a sheaf of Abelian groups $A$ are classified by elements of the etale cohomology group $H^2(X,A)$. Similar statements hold in other ...
Dima Sustretov's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
228 views

Mayer-Vietoris on Fibered Products

Suppose $M \xrightarrow{p} X$ is a surjective submersion of smooth manifolds. Define the fibered product in this case: $$M \times_X M = \{ (m_1, m_2) \in M \times M | p(m_1) = p(m_2) \}$$ and let $U =...
cheyne's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
375 views

Constructing a stack (gerbe) from a connected groupoid

Let $\mathcal{G}=(A\rightrightarrows X)$ be a groupoid. Here $X={\rm Ob}(\mathcal{G})$, $A={\rm Ar}(\mathcal{G})$, and we have 5 maps: $s,t\colon A\to X$ (the source and the target, surjective), $m\...
Mikhail Borovoi's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
190 views

The Abelian Group of Equivalence Classes of Gerbes

Are there any good references/explanations for understanding the "contracted product" (as Brylinski calls it) of a gerbe with abelian band? I am finding it difficult, using Brylisnki's definition. to ...
cheyne's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
356 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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2 votes
0 answers
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A Fourier-Mukai type duality for gerbes, torsors and their duals

Here is a result whose proof uses Fourier-Mukai duality: Consider a family of abelian varieties $A \rightarrow X$, its dual $\check{A} \rightarrow X$, and a torsor $\mathcal{T}$ (for $A \rightarrow X$...
Puraṭci Vinnani's user avatar
9 votes
0 answers
411 views

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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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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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
9 votes
1 answer
1k views

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
8 votes
0 answers
1k views

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 ...
19 votes
2 answers
3k views

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
2 answers
1k views

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
8 votes
3 answers
1k views

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
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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