The universal Euler characteristic of V-manifolds

Abstract: The Euler characteristic is the only additive topological invariant for spaces of certain sort, in particular, for manifolds with some finiteness properties. A generalization of the notion of a manifold is the notion of a V-manifold. Here we discuss a universal additive topological invariant of V-manifolds: the universal Euler characterictic. It takes values in the ring generated (as a Z-module) by isomorphism classes of finite groups. We also consider the universal Euler characteristic on the class of locally closed equivariant unions of cells in equivariant CW-complexes. We show that it is a universal additive invariant satisfying a certain "induction relation". We give Macdonald type equations for the universal Euler characteristic for V-manifolds and for cell complexes of the described type.