Elliptic Genera of Orbifolds

Hirotaka Tamanoi (UC Santa Cruz)


Let M be a compact smooth manifold admitting an action of a finite group G. I will discuss various invariants attached to (M,G).  In the mid 80s, string physicists defined an integer-valued invariant, the orbifold Euler characteristic, for (M,G). A proper way to think of this is as the usual Euler characteristic of twisted free loop spaces.

From the loop space point of view, there are very natural generalizations of this idea. First, we can define higher order orbifold Euler characteristics of (M,G). Second, we can formally consider the spin index
and signature of twisted free loop spaces. This leads to the orbifold elliptic genus of (M,G). I will describe their properties including calculations for "second quantized" manifolds, i.e., for symmetric powers of M.


Winter 2000  meeting of the PNGS