Bundle gerbes for Chern-Simons and Wess-Zumino-Witten theories

Abstract

We develop the theory of Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbes and multiplicative bundle gerbes associated to any principal G-bundle with connection and a class in H4(BG,Z) for a compact semi-simple Lie group G. The Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbe realises differential geometrically the Cheeger-Simons invariant.We apply these notions to refine the Dijkgraaf-Witten correspondence between three dimensional Chern-Simons functionals andWess-Zumino-Witten models associated to the group G.We do this by introducing a lifting to the level of bundle gerbes of the natural map from H4(BG,Z) to H3(G,Z). The notion of a multiplicative bundle gerbe accounts geometrically for the subtleties in this correspondence for non-simply connected Lie groups. The implications forWess-Zumino-Witten models are also discussed.