Higher-Degree Analogs of the Determinant Line Bundle

 In the first part of this paper, given a smooth family of Dirac-type operators on an odd-dimensional closed manifold, we construct an abelian gerbe-with-connection whose curvature is the three-form component of the Atiyah-Singer families index theorem. In the second part of the paper, given a smooth family of Dirac-type operators whose index lies in the subspace of the reduced K-theory of the parametrizing space, we construct a set of Deligne cohomology classes of degree i whose curvatures are the i-form component of the Atiyah-Singer families index theorem. Received: 27 September 2001 / Accepted: 5 April 2002 Published online: 22 August 2002