Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics (Second Edition) |
Editors | Richard Szabo, Martin Bojowald |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Pages | 77-97 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Volume | 4 |
Edition | 2 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-0-323-95706-9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 3 Oct 2024 |
Abstract
Higher bundles are homotopy-coherent generalizations of classical fiber bundles. They appear in numerous contexts in geometry, topology and physics. In particular, higher principal bundles provide the geometric framework for higher-group gauge theories with higher-form gauge potentials and their higher-dimensional holonomies. An ∞-categorical formulation of higher bundles further allows one to identify these objects in contexts outside the worlds of smooth manifolds or topological spaces. This article reviews the theory of ∞-bundles, focussing on principal ∞-bundles, and surveys several of their applications. It is an invited contribution to the Topology section in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics.