Super Wilson Loops and Holonomy on Supermanifolds

Abstract: The classical Wilson loop is the gauge-invariant trace of the parallel transport around a closed path with respect to a connection on a vector bundle over a smooth manifold. We build a precise mathematical model of the super Wilson loop, an extension introduced by Mason-Skinner and Caron-Huot, by endowing the objects occurring with auxiliary Gra{\ss}mann generators coming from S-points. A key feature of our model is a supergeometric parallel transport, which allows for a natural notion of holonomy on a supermanifold as a Lie group valued functor. Our main results for that theory comprise an Ambrose-Singer theorem as well as a natural analogon of the holonomy principle. Finally, we compare our holonomy functor with the holonomy supergroup introduced by Galaev in the common situation of a topological point. It turns out that both theories are different, yet related in a sense made precise.