Simon Willerton (University of Sheffield)
S.Willerton@sheffield.ac.uk
Gerbes are higher analogues of line bundles and can be described in various ways. I will characterize gerbes-with-connection on a manifold as certain functors on the two-dimensional cobordism category of the manifold. This will allow me to relate flat gerbes to Turaev's definition of 1+1 dimensional homotopy quantum field theories.
(Joint work with Ulrich Bunke and Paul Turner.)