Using a nonlinear version of the tautological bundle over Graßmannians, we construct a transgression map for differential characters from M to the nonlinear Graßmannian Gr^S(M) of submanifolds of M of a fixed type S. In particular, we obtain prequantum circle bundles of the nonlinear Graßmannian endowed with the Marsden–Weinstein symplectic form. The associated Kostant–Souriau prequantum extension yields central Lie group extensions of a group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms integrating Lichnerowicz cocycles.

Local normal form theorems for smooth equivariant maps between infinite-dimensional manifolds are established. These normal form results are new even in finite dimensions. The proof is inspired by the Lyapunov–Schmidt reduction for dynamical systems and by the Kuranishi method for moduli spaces. It uses a slice theorem for Fréchet manifolds as the main technical tool. As a consequence, the abstract moduli space obtained by factorizing a level set of the equivariant map with respect to the group action carries the structure of a Kuranishi space, i.e., such moduli spaces are locally modeled on the quotient by a compact group of the zero set of a smooth map. The general results are applied to the moduli space of anti-self-dual instantons, the Seiberg–Witten moduli space and the moduli space of pseudoholomorphic curves.