Diffeological Riemannian orbifolds

Abstract

We show that the data of a Riemannian metric on a differentiable stack presented by an orbifold groupoid is equivalent to the data of a Riemannian metric on its diffeological orbit space. As a consequence, we conclude that the classical notion of Riemannian orbifold is equivalent to that of a Riemannian diffeological orbifold. We use the framework for Riemannian diffeology introduced by Kuribayashi, Sakai, and Shiobara, and our result answers a problem they posed in the affirmative. More generally, we show that a Riemannian metric on a Lie groupoid, namely a 2-metric in the sense of del Hoyo and Fernandes, induces a Riemannian metric on its diffeological orbit space only if the Lie groupoid is regular, and that properness is a sufficient but not necessary condition.