No Arabic abstract
We establish a relation between smooth 2-functors defined on the path 2-groupoid of a smooth manifold and differential forms on this manifold. This relation can be understood as a part of a dictionary between fundamental notions from category theory and differential geometry. We show that smooth 2-functors appear in several fields, namely as connections on (non-abelian) gerbes, as curvatures of smooth functors and as critical points in BF theory. We demonstrate further that our dictionary provides a powerful tool to discuss the transgression of geometric objects to loop spaces.
Parallel transport of a connection in a smooth fibre bundle yields a functor from the path groupoid of the base manifold into a category that describes the fibres of the bundle. We characterize functors obtained like this by two notions we introduce: local trivializations and smooth descent data. This provides a way to substitute categories of functors for categories of smooth fibre bundles with connection. We indicate that this concept can be generalized to connections in categorified bundles, and how this generalization improves the understanding of higher dimensional parallel transport.
The classical Hochschild--Kostant--Rosenberg (HKR) theorem computes the Hochschild homology and cohomology of smooth commutative algebras. In this paper, we generalise this result to other kinds of algebraic structures. Our main insight is that producing HKR isomorphisms for other types of algebras is directly related to computing quasi-free resolutions in the category of left modules over an operad; we establish that an HKR-type result follows as soon as this resolution is diagonally pure. As examples we obtain a permutative and a pre-Lie HKR theorem for smooth commutative and smooth brace algebras, respectively. We also prove an HKR theorem for operads obtained from a filtered distributive law, which recovers, in particular, all the aspects of the classical HKR theorem. Finally, we show that this property is Koszul dual to the operadic PBW property defined by V. Dotsenko and the second author (1804.06485).
For a smooth family of exact forms on a smooth manifold, an algorithm for computing a primitive family smoothly dependent on parameters is given. The algorithm is presented in the context of a diagram chasing argument in the v{C}ech-de Rham complex. In addition, explicit formulas for such primitive family are presented.
We introduce multiplicative differential forms on Lie groupoids with values in VB-groupoids. Our main result gives a complete description of these objects in terms of infinitesimal data. By considering split VB-groupoids, we are able to present a Lie theory for differential forms on Lie groupoids with values in 2-term representations up to homotopy. We also define a differential complex whose 1-cocycles are exactly the multiplicative forms with values in VB-groupoids and study the Morita invariance of its cohomology.
We give a new CR invariant treatment of the bigraded Rumin complex and related cohomology groups via differential forms. We also prove related Hodge decomposition theorems. Among many applications, we give a sharp upper bound on the dimension of the Kohn--Rossi groups $H^{0,q}(M^{2n+1})$, $1leq qleq n-1$, of a closed strictly pseudoconvex manifold with a contact form of nonnegative pseudohermitian Ricci curvature; we prove a sharp CR analogue of the Frolicher inequalities in terms of the second page of a natural spectral sequence; and we generalize the Lee class $mathcal{L}in H^1(M;mathscr{P})$ -- whose vanishing is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a pseudo-Einstein contact form -- to all nondegenerate orientable CR manifolds.