Stringy power operations in Tate K-theory

Abstract

We study the loop spaces of the symmetric powers of an orbifold and use our results to define equivariant power operations in Tate K-theory. We prove that these power operations are elliptic and that the Witten genus is an H_oo map. As a corollary, we recover a formula by Dijkgraaf, Moore, Verlinde and Verlinde for the orbifold Witten genus of these symmetric powers. We outline some of the relationship between our power operations and notions from (generalized) Moonshine.