Jacobi groupoids and generalized Lie bialgebroids. (Q1414658)

A generalization of Poisson and contact groupoids, namely a Jacobi groupoid, is introduced in order to integrate generalized Lie bialgebroids. Poisson groupoids were introduced by \textit{A. Weinstein} in [Bull. Am. Math. Soc., New Ser. 16, 101--104 (1987; Zbl 0618.58020)] as a generalization of both Poisson Lie groups and the symplectic groupoids. In [Duke Math. J. 73, 415--452 (1994; Zbl 0844.22005)], \textit{K. Mackenzie} and \textit{P. Xu} proved that Lie bialgebroids are the infinitesimal invariants of Poisson groupoids. In this paper, the authors complete in some way these results. They first recall some definitions and results about Jacobi manifolds, Lie algebroids and Lie groupoids. Then, they introduce the notion of Jacobi groupoids. They show that generalized Lie bialgebroids are the infinitesimal invariants of these Jacobi groupoids. Finally, several examples are discussed and some interesting properties of these groupoids are proved.