Orbifolds as diffeologies

Abstract

We consider orbifolds as diffeological spaces. This gives rise to a natural notion of differentiable maps between orbifolds, making them into a subcategory of diffeology. We prove that the diffeological approach to orbifolds is equivalent to Satake's notion of a V-manifold and to Haefliger's notion of an orbifold. This follows from a lemma: a diffeomorphism (in the diffeological sense) of finite linear quotients lifts to an equivariant diffeomorphism.