Logarithmic trace and orbifold products (Q984453)

This article provides a purely equivariant definition of the orbifold Chow ring of quotient Deligne-Mumford stacks \([X/G]\) and completes the program begun in \textit{T.~J.~Jarvis, R.~Kaufmann} and \textit{T.~Kimura} [Invent. Math. 168, No. 1, 23--81 (2007; Zbl 1132.14047)], for quotients by finite groups. The orbifold cohomology theory was originally defined by \textit{W.~Chen} and \textit{Y.~Ruan} [Commun. Math. Phys. 248, No. 1, 1--31 (2004; Zbl 1063.53091)] as the classical part of the quantum orbifold cohomology ring. It was later extended to Chow groups and \(K\)-theory. Direct classical descriptions of the product structure in orbifold cohomology were given in \textit{B.~Chen} and \textit{S.~Hu} [Math. Ann. 336, No. 1, 51--71 (2006; Zbl 1122.14018)] for abelian orbifolds and in \textit{R.~Goldin, T.~Holm} and \textit{A.~Knutson} [Duke Math. J. 139, No. 1, 89--139 (2007; Zbl 1159.14029)] for symplectic quotients by a torus. Suppose \(g \in U(n)\) has eigenvalues \(\{\exp(2\pi \sqrt{-1} \alpha_i) | \alpha_i \in [0, 1)\}_{i = 1}^n\), then the \textit{logarithmic trace} of \(g\) is defined to be the sum \(\sum_{i = 1}^n \alpha_i\). It plays a key role in \textit{Chen-Ruan}'s definition of the stringy product on orbifold cohomology. In \S 4, the authors observe that the logarithmic trace can be extended to equivariant \(K\)-theory and the map of taking logarithmic trace takes non-negative elements to non-negative elements. From this, the key definition of twisted pullback of an equivariant vector bundle \(V \to X\) is obtained (\S 5). The paper shows (\S 6) that any such twisted pullback can be used to define a product structure on the equivariant Chow group of the \textit{inertia group scheme}, which is the equivariant counterpart of the inertia orbifold in \textit{Chen-Ruan} above. In particular, the twisted pullback of (the equivariant counterpart of) the orbifold tangent bundle defines the stringy product. Similar to the first mentioned paper, the construction is functorial in that an analogous construction gives the \(K\)-theory counterpart. The authors then define the orbifold Chern character and show that it is an isomorphism on a summand of the equivariant \(K\)-theory.