Secondary Theories for Simplicial Manifolds and Classifying Spaces

Abstract. We define secondary theories and characteristic classes for simplicial smooth manifolds generalizing Karoubi’s multiplicative Ktheory and multiplicative cohomology groups for smooth manifolds. As a special case we get versions of the groups of differential characters of Cheeger and Simons for simplicial smooth manifolds. Special examples include classifying spaces of Lie groups and Lie groupoids.