Unbounded Fredholm Modules and Spectral Flow

Abstract

AbstractAn odd unbounded (respectively, p-summable) Fredholm module for a unital Banach *-algebra, A, is a pair (H,D) where A is represented on the Hilbert space, H, and D is an unbounded self-adjoint operator on H satisfying:(1) (1 + D2)-1 is compact (respectively, Trace_(1 + D2)-(p/2)_∞), and(2) ﹛a ∈ A | [D, a] is bounded﹜ is a dense *- subalgebra of A.If u is a unitary in the dense *-subalgebra mentioned in (2) thenuDu* = D + u[D, u*] = D + Bwhere B is a bounded self-adjoint operator. The pathis a “continuous” path of unbounded self-adjoint “Fredholm” operators. More precisely, we show thatis a norm-continuous path of (bounded) self-adjoint Fredholm operators. The spectral flow of this path is roughly speaking the net number of eigenvalues that pass through 0 in the positive direction as t runs from 0 to 1. This integer,recovers the pairing of the K-homology class [D] with the K-theory class [u].We use I.M. Singer's idea (as did E. Getzler in the θ-summable case) to consider the operator B as a parameter in the Banach manifold, Bsa(H), so that spectral flow can be exhibited as the integral of a closed 1-formon this manifold. Now, for B in ourmanifold, any X ∈ TB_Bsa(H)_ is given by an X in Bsa(H) as the derivative at B along the curve t→ B + tX in the manifold. Then we show that for m a sufficiently large half-integer:is a closed 1-form. For any piecewise smooth path {Dt = D + Bt} with D0 and D1 unitarily equivalent we show thatthe integral of the 1-form ã. If D0 and D1 are not unitarily equivalent, wemust add a pair of correction terms to the right-hand side. We also prove a bounded finitely summable version of the form:for an integer. The unbounded case is proved by reducing to the bounded case via the map . We prove simultaneously a type II version of our results.