Differential Cohomology

Compactifying topological actions using only de Rham forms fails to capture torsion sectors encoded in integral cohomology. Differential cohomology remedies this by combining integral characteristic classes, differential-form curvatures, and holonomy data into a single framework. In the context of deriving SymTFTs from M-theory, such a refinement is crucial for capturing background gauge fields for discrete 1-form global symmetries in the physical theory. In this talk, we will review the construction of differential cohomology and, time permitting, show how a refined Kaluza-Klein compactification leads to background gauge fields that encode these higher-form symmetries.