Categories in Algebra, Geometry and Mathematical Physics
Conference in honour of Ross Street's sixtieth birthday
July 11-16 2005, Macquarie University, Sydney
Fri, 15 July: 10:30 - 11:10
Loop Groups and Categorified Geometry
Stevenson, Danny (University of California, Riverside)
\thanks{Joint work with John Baez, Alissa Crans and Urs Schreiber.}
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I will describe aspects of this joint work on the construction of a 2-group associated to the Kac--Moody central extension of the loop group. I will explain how this construction can be understood in terms of `categorified bundles', i.e.\ gerbes and 2-bundles. Finally I will show how the 2-group we construct is related to the group $\mathrm{String}(n)$ which plays an important role in the work of Stolz and Teichner on elliptic objects.