Parallel transport of higher flat gerbes as an extended homotopy quantum field theory

Abstract

We prove that the parallel transport of a flat n- 1 -gerbe on any given target space gives rise to an n-dimensional extended homotopy quantum field theory. In case the target space is the classifying space of a finite group, we provide explicit formulae for this homotopy quantum field theory in terms of transgression. Moreover, we use the geometric theory of orbifolds to give a dimension-independent version of twisted and equivariant Dijkgraaf–Witten models. Finally, we introduce twisted equivariant Dijkgraaf–Witten theories giving us in the 3-2-1-dimensional case a new class of equivariant modular tensor categories which can be understood as twisted versions of the equivariant modular categories constructed by Maier, Nikolaus and Schweigert.