Non-abelian gerbes and some applications in string theory

TL;DR

This paper reviews the construction of non-abelian gerbes using descent and explores their applications in string theory, including anomaly cancellation and non-geometric T-duals.

Contribution

It extends the systematic construction of bundle gerbes to non-abelian gerbes and discusses their roles in various string theory contexts.

Findings

Extended the construction of bundle gerbes to non-abelian cases.

Applied non-abelian gerbes to anomaly cancellation in supersymmetric sigma models.

Provided a geometric framework for non-geometric T-duals.

Abstract

We review a systematic construction of the 2-stack of bundle gerbes via descent, and extend it to non-abelian gerbes. We review the role of non-abelian gerbes in orientifold sigma models, for the anomaly cancellation in supersymmetric sigma models, and in a geometric description of so-called non-geometric T-duals.