We examine the relationship between the singular set of a compact Riemannian orbifold and the spectrum of the Hodge Laplacian on $p$-forms by computing the heat invariants associated to the $p$-spectrum. We show that the heat invariants of the $0$-spectrum together with those of the $1$-spectrum for the corresponding Hodge Laplacians are sufficient to distinguish orbifolds with singularities from manifolds as long as the singular sets have codimension $le 3.$ This is enough to distinguish orbifolds from manifolds for dimension $le 3.$
We study the existence of closed geodesics on compact Riemannian orbifolds, and on noncompact Riemannian manifolds in the presence of a cocompact, isometric group action. We show that every noncontractible Riemannian manifold which admits such an act
ion, and every odd-dimensional, compact Riemannian orbifold has a nontrivial closed geodesic.
Sasakian manifolds are odd-dimensional counterpart to Kahler manifolds. They can be defined as contact manifolds equipped with an invariant Kahler structure on their symplectic cone. The quotient of this cone by the homothety action is a complex mani
fold called Vaisman. We study harmonic forms and Hodge decomposition on Vaisman and Sasakian manifolds. We construct a Lie superalgebra associated to a Sasakian manifold in the same way as the Kahler supersymmetry algebra is associated to a Kahler manifold. We use this construction to produce a self-contained, coordinate-free proof of the results by Tachibana, Kashiwada and Sato on the decomposition of harmonic forms and cohomology of Sasakian and Vaisman manifolds. In the last section, we compute the supersymmetry algebra of Sasakian manifolds explicitly.
Manifolds all of whose geodesics are closed have been studied a lot, but there are only few examples known. The situation is different if one allows in addition for orbifold singularities. We show, nevertheless, that the abundance of new examples is
restricted to even dimensions. As one key ingredient we provide a characterization of orientable manifolds among orientable orbifolds in terms of characteristic classes.
We develop the Gompf fiber connected sum operation for symplectic orbifolds. We use it to construct a symplectic 4-orbifold with $b_1=0$ and containing symplectic surfaces of genus 1 and 2 that are disjoint and span the rational homology. This is use
d in turn to construct a K-contact Smale-Barden manifold with specified 2-homology that satisfies the known topological constraints with sharper estimates than the examples constructed previously. The manifold can be chosen spin or non-spin.
We characterize Riemannian orbifolds and their coverings in terms of metric geometry. In particular, we show that the metric double of a Riemannian orbifold along the closure of its codimension one stratum is a Riemannian orbifold and that the natural projection is an orbifold covering.