Gerbes over posets and twisted C*-dynamical systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework connecting gerbes over posets, non-abelian cocycles, and twisted C*-dynamical systems, revealing new structures in the context of presheaves of C*-algebras and their duals.

Contribution

It introduces a notion of holonomy for gerbes over posets and defines twisted C*-dynamical systems using 2-groups, advancing the understanding of non-trivial fixed-point structures.

Findings

Gerbes over posets are characterized by non-abelian cocycles.

Duals of DR-presheaves form group gerbes over the base poset.

Sections of DR-presheaves induce twisted actions on Cuntz algebras.

Abstract

A base $\Delta$ generating the topology of a space $M$ becomes a partially ordered set (poset), when ordered under inclusion of open subsets. Given a precosheaf over $\Delta$ of fixed-point spaces (typically C*-algebras) under the action of a group $G$, in general one cannot find a precosheaf of $G$-spaces having it as fixed-point precosheaf. Rather one gets a gerbe over $\Delta$, that is, a "twisted precosheaf" whose twisting is encoded by a cocycle with coefficients in a suitable 2-group. We give a notion of holonomy for a gerbe, in terms of a non-abelian cocycle over the fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$. At the C*-algebraic level, holonomy leads to a general notion of twisted C*-dynamical system, based on a generic 2-group instead of the usual adjoint action on the underlying C*-algebra. As an application of these notions, we study presheaves of group duals (DR-presheaves) and prove that the dual object of a DR-presheaf is a group gerbe over $\Delta$. It is also shown that any section of a DR-presheaf defines a twisted action of $\pi_1(M)$ on a Cuntz algebra.