Asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel for orbifolds (Q2519161)

Orbifolds occur naturally in many different areas of mathematics. Though they are not smooth, many results on smooth manifolds can be generalized to them. This paper studies the spectral theory of Riemannian orbifolds. Specifically, it gives a new construction of the heat kernel of a Riemannian orbifold via parametrix and obtains several leading terms in the small time asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel. By evaluating these terms for two dimensional compact orbifolds, it shows that the topological type of a two dimensional orbifold is completely determined by its spectrum (Theorem 5.15). It also shows that Riemannian orbifolds with certain restrictions on the singularities are not isospectral to a Riemannian manifold (Theorem 5.1). The introduction of this paper gives a very good summary of results on spectral theory of compact orbifolds.