Chiral de Rham Complex and Orbifolds

Edward Frenkel, Matthew Szczesny

Published 2003-07-14, updated 2003-07-18Version 2

Suppose that a finite group $G$ acts on a smooth complex variety $X$. Then this action lifts to the Chiral de Rham Complex of $X$ and to its cohomology by automorphisms of the vertex algebra structure. We define twisted sectors for the Chiral de Rham Complex (and their cohomologies) as sheaves of twisted vertex algebra modules supported on the components of the fixed-point sets $X^{g}, g \in G$. Each twisted sector sheaf carries a BRST differential and is quasi-isomorphic to the de Rham complex of $X^{g}$. Putting the twisted sectors together with the vacuum sector and taking $G$--invariants, we recover the additive and graded structures of Chen-Ruan orbifold cohomology. Finally, we show that the orbifold elliptic genus is the partition function of the direct sum of the cohomologies of the twisted sectors.