Higher Geometric Structures on Manifolds and the Gauge Theory of Deligne Cohomology

Abstract: We study smooth higher symmetry groups and moduli $\infty$-stacks of generic higher geometric structures on manifolds. Symmetries are automorphisms which cover non-trivial diffeomorphisms of the base manifold. We construct the smooth higher symmetry group of any geometric structure on $M$ and show that this completely classifies, via a universal property, equivariant structures on the higher geometry. We construct moduli stacks of higher geometric data as $\infty$-categorical quotients by the action of the higher symmetries, extract information about the homotopy types of these moduli $\infty$-stacks, and prove a helpful sufficient criterion for when two such higher moduli stacks are equivalent. In the second part of the paper we study higher $\mathrm{U}(1)$-connections. First, we observe that higher connections come organised into higher groupoids, which further carry affine actions by Baez-Crans-type higher vector spaces. We compute a presentation of the higher gauge actions for $n$-gerbes with $k$-connection, comment on the relation to higher-form symmetries, and present a new String group model. We construct smooth moduli $\infty$-stacks of higher Maxwell and Einstein-Maxwell solutions, correcting previous such considerations in the literature, and compute the homotopy groups of several moduli $\infty$-stacks of higher $\mathrm{U}(1)$- connections. Finally, we show that a discrepancy between two approaches to the differential geometry of NSNS supergravity (via generalised and higher geometry, respectively) vanishes at the level of moduli $\infty$-stacks of NSNS supergravity solutions.