Virtual manifolds and localization (Q2266865): Difference between revisions

Virtual manifolds and orbifolds introduced in this paper are defined by analogy to the usual ones, but by gluing charts of possibly different dimensions. Transition maps are vector orbibundle projections satisfying certain compatibility conditions, that induce a groupoid structure on the set of charts. Much of geometric integration theory is then transferred to virtual orbifolds including partitions of unity, deRham forms, Stokes' theorem and even the Atiyah-Bott localization formula. As the name suggests, the concept is motivated by construction of Gromov-Witten invariants via integration over virtual fundamental cycles of moduli spaces. Virtual orbifolds resemble Ruan's construction the most, while being dual to Kuranishi structures of Fukaya-Ono and weakly smooth structures of Li-Tian. More generally, the authors' idea applies to any moduli set-up given by a proper smooth section \(S\) of a Banach orbibundle, whose linearization is Fredholm at \(S^{-1}(0)\). If the linearization is surjective, i.e. \(S\) intersects the zero section transversally, then \(S^{-1}(0)\) defines a cycle representing the Euler class of the bundle via integration. Otherwise, the section is stabilized, that is perturbed, to achieve transversality. If this can be done globally then one can work with the stabilized cycle, but global stabilizations need not exist for orbibundles. The main result of this paper is that one can always combine local stabilizations into a virtual orbifold, replacing the stabilized cycle with a virtual 'cycle', that can be integrated over to produce invariants.