Related papers: Orbifolds, geometric structures and foliations. Ap…

We introduce some compact orbifolds on which there is a certain finite group action having a simple convex polytope as the orbit space. We compute the orbifold fundamental group and homology groups of these orbifolds. We calculate the…

This is a survey paper based on my talk at the Workshop on Orbifolds and String Theory, the goal of which was to explain the role of groupoids and their classifying spaces as a foundation for the theory of orbifolds.

An orbifold is a Morita equivalence class of a proper {\' e}tale Lie groupoid. A unitary equivalence class of spectral triples over the algebra of smooth invariant functions are associated with any compact spin orbifold. In the case of an…

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between suborbifolds and orbifold embeddings. In particular, we give natural definitions of the notion of suborbifold and orbifold embedding and provide many examples.…

A Riemannian orbifold is a mildly singular generalization of a Riemannian manifold which is locally modeled on the quotient of a connected, open manifold under a finite group of isometries. If all of the isometries used to define the local…

We introduce orbifolds from the classical point of view, using charts, and present orbifold versions of elementary objects from Algebraic Topology, such as the fundamental group, coverings and Euler characteristic; Differential…

The class of Riemannian orbifolds of dimension n defined by a lower bound on the sectional curvature and the volume and an upper bound on the diameter has only finitely many members up to orbifold homeomorphism. Furthermore, any class of…

Isoparametric submanifolds and hypersurfaces in space forms are geometric objects that have been studied since E. Cartan. Another important class of geometric objects is the orbits of a polar action on a Riemannian manifold,e.g., the orbits…

Starting with a concise review of quaternionic geometry and quaternionic K{\"a}hler manifolds, we define a transversely quaternionic K{\"a}hler foliation. Then we formulate and prove the foliated versions of the now classical results of…

The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1. we prove the triangulability of smooth orbifolds with corners, generalizing the same statement for orbifolds. 2. based on 1, we propose a new homology theory. We call it geometric homology theory…

Stable fold maps are fundamental tools in a generalization of the theory of Morse functions on smooth manifolds and its application to studies of topological properties of smooth manifolds. Round fold maps were introduced as stable fold…

We consider quotients of string and M-theory by discrete subgroups of the U-duality group. This results in what we call O-folds, which are generalisations of orbifolds and orientifolds, and generically involve non-geometric identifications…

Given a two-dimensional conformal field theory with a global symmetry, we propose a method to implement an orbifold construction by taking orbits of the modular group. For the case of cyclic symmetries we find that this approach always…

In 1985, physicists Dixon, Harvey, Vafa and Witten studied string theories on Calabi-Yau orbifolds (cf. [DHVW]). An interesting discovery in their paper was the prediction that a certain physicist's Euler number of the orbifold must be…

As a branch of algebraic and differential topology of manifolds, the theory of Morse functions and their higher dimensional versions or fold maps and its application to algebraic and differential topology of manifolds is fundamental,…

Fold maps are smooth maps at each singular point of which it is represented as the product map of a Morse function and the identity map. Round fold maps are, in short, such maps the sets of all singular points of which are embedded…

An equivariant topological field theory is defined on a cobordism category of manifolds with principal fiber bundles for a fixed (finite) structure group. We provide a geometric construction which for any given morphism $G \to H$ of finite…

In quantum field theory, an orbifold is a way to obtain a new theory from an old one by gauging a finite global symmetry. This definition of orbifold does not make sense for quantum gravity theories, that admit (conjecturally) no global…

In this paper we study the string topology (\'a la Chas-Sullivan) of an orbifold. We define the string homology ring product at the level of the free loop space of the classifying space of an orbifold. We study its properties (introducing…

We show that any collection of n-dimensional orbifolds with sectional curvature and volume uniformly bounded below, diameter bounded above, and with only isolated singular points contains orbifolds of only finitely many orbifold…