English

Orbifolds as stacks?

Differential Geometry 2011-04-05 v2

Abstract

The first goal of this survey paper is to argue that if orbifolds are groupoids, then the collection of orbifolds and their maps has to be thought of as a 2-category. Compare this with the classical definition of Satake and Thurston of orbifolds as a 1-category of sets with extra structure and/or with the "modern" definition of orbifolds as proper etale Lie groupoids up to Morita equivalence. The second goal is to describe two complementary ways of thinking of orbifolds as a 2-category: 1. the weak 2-category of foliation Lie groupoids, bibundles and equivariant maps between bibundles and 2. the strict 2-category of Deligne-Mumford stacks over the category of smooth manifolds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.4160,
  title  = {Orbifolds as stacks?},
  author = {Eugene Lerman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.4160},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

v2: minor changes

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:54:21.653Z