Crossed complexes are shown to have an algebra sufficiently rich to model the geometric inductive definition of simplices, and so to give a purely algebraic proof of the Homotopy Addition Lemma (HAL) for the boundary of a simplex. This leads to the fundamental crossed complex of a simplicial set. The main result is a normalisation theorem for this fundamental crossed complex, analogous to the usual theorem for simplicial abelian groups, but more complicated to set up and prove, because of the complications of the HAL and of the notion of homotopies for crossed complexes. We start with some historical background, and give a survey of the required basic facts on crossed complexes.

We introduce nonabelian differential cohomology classifying ∞-bundles with smooth connection and their higher gerbes of sections, generalizing [138]. We construct classes of examples of these from lifts, twisted lifts and obstructions to lifts through shifted central extensions of groups by the shifted abelian n-group B n−1 U(1). Notable examples are String 2-bundles [9] and Fivebrane 6-bundles [133]. The obstructions to lifting ordinary principal bundles to these, hence in particular the obstructions to lifting Spin-structures to String-structures [13] and further to Fivebrane-structures [133, 52], are abelian Chern-Simons 3- and 7-bundles with characteristic class the first and second fractional Pontryagin class, whose abelian cocycles have been constructed explicitly by Brylinski and McLaughlin [35, 36]. We realize their construction as an abelian component of obstruction theory in nonabelian cohomology by ∞-Lieintegrating the L∞-algebraic data in [132]. As a result, even if the lift fails, we obtain twisted String 2- and twisted Fivebrane 6-bundles classified in twisted nonabelian (differential) cohomology and generalizing the twisted bundles appearing in twisted K-theory. We explain the Green-Schwarz mechanism in heterotic string theory in terms of twisted String 2-bundles and its magnetic dual version – according to [133] – in terms of twisted Fivebrane 6-bundles. We close by transgressing differential cocycles to mapping

We prove that if M is a CW-complex and M 1 is its 1-skeleton, then the crossed module Π2(M,M 1) depends only on the homotopy type of M as a space, up to free products, in the category of crossed modules, with Π2(D 2,S 1). From this it follows that if G is a finite crossed module and M is finite, then the number of crossed module morphisms Π2(M,M 1) →Gcan be re-scaled to a homotopy invariant IG(M), depending only on the algebraic 2-type of M. We describe an algorithm for calculating π2(M,M (1) ) as a crossed module over π1(M (1)), in the case when M is the complement of a knotted surface Σ in S 4 and M (1) is the handlebody of a handle decomposition of M made from its 0- and 1-handles. Here, Σ is presented by a knot with bands. This in particular gives us a geometric method for calculating the algebraic 2-type of the complement of a knotted surface from a hyperbolic splitting of it. We prove in addition that the invariant IG yields a non-trivial invariant of knotted surfaces in S 4 with good properties with regard to explicit calculations.

Nonabelian differential n-cocycles provide the data for an assignment of “quantities ” to n-dimensional “spaces ” which is • locally controlled by a given “typical quantity”; • globally compatible with all possible gluings of volumes. For n = 1 this encompasses the notion of parallel transport in fiber bundles with connection. In general we think of it as parallel n-transport. For low n and/or “sufficiently abelian quantities ” this has been modeled by differential characters, (n − 1)-gerbes, (n − 1)-bundle gerbes and n-bundles with connection. We give a general definition for all n in terms of descent data for transport n-functors along the lines of [7, 57, 58, 59]. Concrete realizations, notably Chern-Simons n-cocycles, are obtained by integrating L∞-algebras and their higher Cartan-Ehresmann connections [52]. Here we assume all gluing to happen through equivalences. If one