Orbifolds and orbibundles in complex hyperbolic geometry (Q6140861)

The author and \textit{C. H. Grossi} [``Quotients of the holomorphic 2-ball and the turnover'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2109.08753}] produced bundles over surfaces with complex hyperbolic structures as in [\textit{S. Anan'in} et al., Int. Math. Res. Not. 2011, No. 19, 4295--4375 (2011; Zbl 1228.32024); \textit{S. Anan'in} and \textit{N. Gusevskii}, ``Complex hyperbolic structures on disc bundles over surfaces. II: Example of a trivial bundle'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:math/0512406}]. Nevertheless, it is actually undesirable to reduce the examples found at the orbifold level to the surface level by pulling back the disc orbibundle to a disc bundle over a surface. By doing that, we lose track of the \(\mathrm{PU}(2,1)\)-character variety we are dealing with, thus losing information such as seen in rigid representations possibly becoming flexible. This paper develops a theory of \(\mathbb{S}^{1}\)-orbibundles over compact oriented 2-orbifolds via diffeology [\textit{P. Iglesias} et al., Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 362, No. 6, 2811--2831 (2010; Zbl 1197.57025)], using it to introduce the concept of Euler number for oriented vector orbibundles of rank 2. The Toledo rigidity [\textit{D. Toledo}, J. Differ. Geom. 29, No. 1, 125--133 (1989; Zbl 0676.57012)] for 2-orbifolds is also established. The tools obtained here are essential for calculating the Euler number of the disc orbibundles constructed in [the author and \textit{C. H. Grossi}, loc. cit.], providing a general framework that may also be applied to the examples obtained in [\textit{S. Anan'in} et al., loc. cit.]. At the core of these calculations and of the technology developed here lies Lemma 20 linking the geometry and the topology of \(\mathbb{S}^{1}\)-orbibundles.