Rigid cohomology of topological groupoids

Abstract A cohomology theory for locally trivial, locally compact topological groupoids with coefficients in vector bundles is constructed, generalizing constructions of Hochschild and Mostow (1962) for topological groups and Higgins (1971) for discrete groupoids. It is calculated to be naturally isomorphic to the cohomology of the vertex groups, and is thus independent of the twistedness of the groupoid. The second cohomology space is accordingly realized as those “rigid” extensions which essentially arise from extensions of the vertex group; the cohomological machinery now yields the unexpected result that in fact all extensions, satisfying some natural weak conditions, are rigid.