Lie groupoid

In mathematics, a Lie groupoid is a groupoid where the set Ob of objects and the set Mor of morphisms are both manifolds, the source and target operations

s,t : Mor \to Ob

are submersions, and all the category operations (source and target, composition, and identity-assigning map) are smooth.

A Lie groupoid can thus be thought of as a "many-object generalization" of a Lie group, just as a groupoid is a many-object generalization of a group. Just as every Lie group has a Lie algebra, every Lie groupoid has a Lie algebroid.

Examples

Morita Morphisms and Smooth Stacks

Beside isomorphism of groupoids there is a more coarse notation of equivalence, the so-called Morita equivalence. A quite general example is the Morita-morphism of the Čech groupoid which goes as follows. Let M be a smooth manifold and \{U_\alpha\} an open cover of M. Define G_0:=\bigsqcup_\alpha U_\alpha the disjoint union with the obvious submersion p:G_0\to M. In order to encode the structure of the manifold M define the set of morphisms G_1:=\bigsqcup_{\alpha,\beta}U_{\alpha\beta} where U_{\alpha\beta}=U_\alpha \cap U_\beta\subset M. The source and target map are defined as the embeddings s:U_{\alpha\beta}\to U_\alpha and t:U_{\alpha\beta}\to U_\beta. And multiplication is the obvious one if we read the U_{\alpha\beta} as subsets of M (compatible points in U_{\alpha\beta} and U_{\beta\gamma} actually are the same in M and also lie in U_{\alpha\gamma}).

This Čech groupoid is in fact the pullback groupoid of M\Rightarrow M, i.e. the trivial groupoid over M, under p. That is what makes it Morita-morphism.

In order to get the notion of an equivalence relation we need to make the construction symmetric and show that it is also transitive. In this sense we say that 2 groupoids G_1\Rightarrow G_0 and H_1\Rightarrow H_0 are Morita equivalent iff there exists a third groupoid K_1\Rightarrow K_0 together with 2 Morita morphisms from G to K and H to K. Transitivity is an interesting construction in the category of groupoid principal bundles and left to the reader.

It arises the question of what is preserved under the Morita equivalence. There are 2 obvious things, one the coarse quotient/ orbit space of the groupoid G_0/G_1 = H_0/H_1 and secondly the stabilizer groups G_p\cong H_q for corresponding points p\in G_0 and q\in H_0.

The further question of what is the structure of the coarse quotient space leads to the notion of a smooth stack. We can expect the coarse quotient to be a smooth manifold if for example the stabilizer groups are trivial (as in the example of the Čech groupoid). But if the stabilizer groups change we cannot expect a smooth manifold any longer. The solution is to revert the problem and to define:

A smooth stack is a Morita-equivalence class of Lie groupoids. The natural geometric objects living on the stack are the geometric objects on Lie groupoids invariant under Morita-equivalence. As an example consider the Lie groupoid cohomology.

Examples

External links

Alan Weinstein, Groupoids: unifying internal and external symmetry, AMS Notices, 43 (1996), 744-752. Also available as arXiv:math/9602220

Kirill Mackenzie, Lie Groupoids and Lie Algebroids in Differential Geometry, Cambridge U. Press, 1987.

Kirill Mackenzie, General Theory of Lie Groupoids and Lie Algebroids, Cambridge U. Press, 2005

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