Inertia and delocalized twisted cohomology (Q2472758)

In the recent mathematical literature cohomological and topological properties of orbifolds became an intensively studied subject. Classically, orbifolds are defined like manifolds as spaces which are locally homeomorphic to a quotient of a Euclidean space by a finite group. Alternatively, orbifolds are represented by proper étale smooth groupoids. In the modern coordinate invariant point of view an orbifold is a smooth stack in smooth manifolds which admits an orbifold atlas. By considering orbifolds as objects in the 2-category of smooth stacks one makes the notion of morphisms and other constructions like fibre products transparent. The framework of stacks is most natural if one wants to include gerbes into the picture. If one replaces smooth manifolds by topological spaces, then the corresponding analog of an orbifold is an orbispace. The goal of the present paper is to show that many geometric constructions on orbifolds are in fact topological concepts and extend to orbispaces. The fixed point manifolds of the elements of the local automorphism groups of an orbifold \(X\) can be assembled into a new orbifold \(LX\) called the inertia or loop orbifold or the orbifold of twisted sectors. In the present paper the authors show that the loop orbifold can be characterized as the 2-categorical (in the 2-category of stacks) equalizer of the pair \((id_X,id_X)\). The same definition applies to orbispaces in the topological context. Since 2-categorical equalizers always exist in 2-categories, \(LX\) exists as a stack. But it is not a priori clear that \(LX\) is again an orbifold (or orbispace, respectively). In the present paper the authors show that taking loop stacks preserves orbispaces. A \(U(1)\)-banded gerbe \(G\rightarrow X\) over an orbifold gives rise to a \(U(1)\)-principal bundle \(\widetilde{G}\rightarrow LX\) over the loop orbifold of \(X\). This bundle has a natural reduction of structure groups to the discrete \(U(1)^\delta\). The traditional way to construct this reduction is to choose connection and curving on the gerbe \(G\rightarrow X\). This geometric data induces a connection on \(\widetilde{G}\rightarrow LX\) which turns out to be flat. The flat connection gives reduction of structure groups, and can be formed the sheaf \(\mathcal{L}\) of locally sections of the associated flat line bundle \(L\rightarrow LX\). The authors give a topological construction of the reduction of the structure group of \(\widetilde{G}\rightarrow LX\) to \(U(1)^\delta\) and of the sheaf \(\mathcal{L}\). Furthermore, the authors calculate its holonomy in terms in the Dixmier-Douady class of the gerbe \(G\rightarrow X\). The third concept which the authors generalize to the topological case is that of twisted delocalized orbifold cohomology. The usual definition in the smooth case is based on the de Rham complex of forms on \(LX\) with coefficients in \(L\rightarrow LX\). The differential of this complex involves the flat connection on \(L\) and a closed three-form on \(X\) which represents the image of the Dixmier-Douady class of the gerbe \(f:G\rightarrow X\) in real cohomology. Let \(f_L:G_L\rightarrow LX\) denote the pull-back of the gerbe via \(LX\rightarrow X\). The authors use the sheaf theory for smooth (or topological, respectively) stacks, in the authors' sense [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 7, 1007--1062 (2007; Zbl 1149.14002)], in order to define the twisted delocalized orbifold cohomology as sheaf cohomology \(H^\ast(LX,Tw_G(\mathcal{L}))\), where \(Tw_G(\mathcal{L}):=R(f_L)_\ast f^\ast_L(\mathcal{L})\). The main result of the paper is that in the smooth case the twisted delocalized cohomology according to this sheaf theoretic definition is isomorphic to the former construction using the de Rham complex. In addition to the fact that it works in the topological context the shape theoretic definition of twisted delocalization orbifold cohomology of the authors has the advantage that it is functorial in the gerbe \(G\rightarrow X\).