Bundle gerbes for topological insulators
Volume 114 / 2018
Banach Center Publications 114 (2018), 145-180
MSC: 53C08, 14D21.
DOI: 10.4064/bc114-4
Abstract
Bundle gerbes are simple examples of higher geometric structures that show their utility in dealing with topological subtleties of physical theories. I will review a recent construction of torsion topological invariants for condensed-matter systems via equivariant bundle gerbes. The construction covers static and periodically driven systems with time reversal invariance in 2 and 3 space dimensions. It involves refinements of geometry of gerbes that will be discussed in the first lecture, the second one being devoted to the applications to topological insulators.
