Bundle Gerbes for Chern-simons and Wess-zumino-witten Theories

We develop the theory of Chern-Simons bundle 2-gerbes and multiplicative bundle gerbes associated to any principal G-bundle with connection and a class in H(BG, Z) for a compact semi-simple Lie group G. The ChernSimons bundle 2-gerbe realises differential geometrically the Cheeger-Simons invariant. We apply these notions to refine the Dijkgraaf-Witten correspondence between three dimensional Chern-Simons functionals and Wess-ZuminoWitten models associated to the group G. We do this by introducing a lifting to the level of bundle gerbes of the natural map from H(BG, Z) to H(G, Z). The notion of a multiplicative bundle gerbe accounts geometrically for the subtleties in this correspondence for non-simply connected Lie groups. The implications for Wess-Zumino-Witten models are also discussed.