Delocalized Chern character for stringy orbifold K-theory

Abstract

In this paper, we define a stringy product on $K^*_{orb}(\XX) \otimes \C $, the orbifold K-theory of any almost complex presentable orbifold $\XX$. We establish that under this stringy product, the de-locaized Chern character ch_{deloc} : K^*_{orb}(\XX) \otimes \C \longrightarrow H^*_{CR}(\XX), after a canonical modification, is a ring isomorphism. Here $ H^*_{CR}(\XX)$ is the Chen-Ruan cohomology of $\XX$. The proof relies on an intrinsic description of the obstruction bundles in the construction of Chen-Ruan product. As an application, we investigate this stringy product on the equivariant K-theory $K^*_G(G)$ of a finite group $G$ with the conjugation action. It turns out that the stringy product is different from the Pontryajin product (the latter is also called the fusion product in string theory).