We calculate the small quantum orbifold cohomology of arbitrary weighted projective spaces. We generalize Givental's heuristic argument, which relates small quantum cohomology to S 1 -equivariant Floer cohomology of loop space, to weighted projective spaces and use this to conjecture an explicit formula for the small J-function, a generating function for certain genus-zero Gromov-Witten invariants. We prove this conjecture using a method due to Bertram. This provides the first non-trivial example of a family of orbifolds of arbitrary dimension for which the small quantum orbifold cohomology is known. In addition we obtain formulas for the small J-functions of weighted projective complete intersections satisfying a combinatorial condition; this condition naturally singles out the class of orbifolds with terminal singularities.

No abstract