Given a family of Dirac operators with vanishing spectral flow we construct a thin-invariant rank-one field theory in the sense of Turner and Willerton arXiv:math.AT/0201116. Our construction of the field theory generalizes the one of the index gerbe by Lott, arXiv:math.DG/0106177, and it also complements the relation between gerbes and thin-invariant rank-one field theories studied in arXive:math.AT/0201116.
Recently, for a family of ungraded Dirac operators over some space $B$ J. Lott constructed an index gerbe. In the present paper we show (in analogy to the holonomy formula for the determinant bundle in the graded case) that the holonomy of the index gerbe (a priori a hermitean line bundle with connection over the free loop space $LB$) coincides with an adiabatic limit of determinant bundles of an associated family of graded Dirac operators over $LB$.
The use of bundle gerbes and bundle gerbe modules is considered as a replacement for the usual theory of Clifford modules on manifolds that fail to be spin. It is shown that both sides of the Atiyah-Singer index formula for coupled Dirac operators can be given natural interpretations using this language and that the resulting formula is still an identity.
In this paper we establish a one-to-one correspondence between $S^1$-gerbes with connections, on the one hand, and their holonomies, for simply connected manifolds, or their parallel transports, in the general case, on the other hand. This result is a higher-order analogue of the familiar equivalence between bundles with connections and their holonomies for connected manifolds. The holonomy of a gerbe with group $S^1$ on a simply connected manifold $M$ is a group morphism from the thin second homotopy group to $S^1$, satisfying a smoothness condition, where a homotopy between maps from $[0,1]^…
The goal of this paper is to apply the universal gerbe of \cite{CMi1} and \cite{CMi2} to give an alternative, simple and more unified view of the relationship between index theory and gerbes. We discuss determinant bundle gerbes \cite{CMMi1} and the index gerbe of \cite{L} for the case of families of Dirac operators on odd dimensional closed manifolds. The method also works for a family of Dirac operators on odd dimensional manifolds with boundary, for a pair of Melrose-Piazza's $Cl(1)$-spectral sections for a family of Dirac operators on even dimensional closed manifolds with vanishing index …
The geometry of nonholonomic bundle gerbes, provided with nonlinear connection structure, and nonholonomic gerbe modules is elaborated as the theory of Clifford modules on nonholonomic manifolds which positively fail to be spin. We explore an approach to such nonholonomic Dirac operators and derive the related Atiyah-Singer index formulas. There are considered certain applications in modern gravity and geometric mechanics of such Clifford-Lagrange/ Finsler gerbes and their realizations as nonholonomic Clifford and Riemann-Cartan modules.
We give an Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theory construction of the bundle of fermionic Fock spaces parametrized by vector potentials in odd space dimensions and prove that this leads in a simple manner to the known Schwinger terms (Faddeev-Mickelsson cocycle) for the gauge group action. We relate the APS construction to the bundle gerbe approach discussed recently by Carey and Murray, including an explicit computation of the Dixmier-Douady class. An advantage of our method is that it can be applied whenever one has a form of the APS theorem at hand, as in the case of fermions in an external grav…
In this paper, we construct the index bundle gerbe of a family of self-adjoint Dirac-type operators, refining a construction of Segal. In a special case, we construct a geometric bundle gerbe called the caloron bundle gerbe, which comes with a natural connection and curving, and show that it is isomorphic to the analytically constructed index bundle gerbe. We apply these constructions to certain moduli spaces associated to compact Riemann surfaces, constructing on these moduli spaces, natural bundle gerbes with connection and curving, whose 3-curvature represent Dixmier-Douady classes that are…
In this paper we prove a tertiary index theorem which relates a spectral geometric and a homotopy theoretic invariant of an almost complex manifold with framed boundary. It is derived from the index theoretic and homotopy theoretic versions of a complex elliptic genus and interestingly related with the structure of the stable homotopy groups of spheres.
In this thesis we talk about lipschitz-homotopy invariants for manifolds of bounded geometry. There are three main results: the first one is the definition of a controvariant functor between the category of manifolds of bounded geometry with uniformly proper lipschitz maps and the category of complex vector space together linear maps. As consequence of this we obtain that the (un)-reduced $L^2$-cohomology is a lipschitz-homotopy invariant. The second result is the invariance of the Roe index of the signature operator under lipschitz-homotopy equivalence which preserves the orientations. Finall…
In this paper we study the Roe index of the signature operator of manifolds of bounded geometry. Our main result is the proof of the uniform homotopy invariance of this index. In other words we show that, given an orientation-preserving uniform homotopy equivalence $f:(M,g) \longrightarrow (N,h)$ between two oriented manifolds of bounded geometry, we have that $f_\star(Ind_{Roe}D_M) = Ind_{Roe}(D_N)$. Moreover we also show that the same result holds considering a group $Γ$ acting on $M$ and $N$ by isometries and assuming that $f$ is $Γ$-equivariant. The only assumption on the action of $Γ$ is …
We use an index-theoretic technique of Hitchin to show that the space of complete Riemannian metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on certain open spin manifolds has nontrivial homotopy groups in infinitely many degrees. A new ingredient of independent interest is homotopy density of the subspace of metrics with cylindrical ends.
We study the homotopy type of the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on high-dimensional compact spin manifolds. Hitchin used the fact that there are no harmonic spinors on a manifold with positive scalar curvature to construct a secondary index map from the space of positive scalar metrics to a suitable space from the real $K$-theory spectrum. Our main results concern the nontriviality of this map. We prove that for $2n \geq 6$, the natural $KO$-orientation from the infinite loop space of the Madsen--Tillmann--Weiss spectrum factors (up to homotopy) through the space of metrics of …
We provide an interpretation of the APS index theorem of Piazza-Schick and Zeidler in terms of coarse homotopy theory. On the one hand we propose a motivic version of the boundary value problem, the index theorem, and the associated secondary invariants. On the other hand, we discuss in detail how the abstract version is related with classical case for Dirac operators.
We analyse the problem of assigning sign choices to O-planes in orientifolds of type II string theory. We show that there exists a sequence of invariant $p$-gerbes with $p\geq-1$, which give rise to sign choices and are related by coboundary maps. We prove that the sign choice homomorphisms stabilise with the dimension of the orientifold and we derive topological constraints on the possible sign configurations. Concrete calculations for spherical and toroidal orientifolds are carried out, and in particular we exhibit a four-dimensional orientifold where not every sign choice is geometrically a…
For a closed, oriented, odd dimensional manifold $X$, we define the rho invariant $ρ(X,E,H)$ for the twisted odd signature operator valued in a flat hermitian vector bundle $E$, where $H = \sum i^{j+1} H_{2j+1}$ is an odd-degree closed differential form on $X$ and $H_{2j+1}$ is a real-valued differential form of degree ${2j+1}$. We show that the twisted rho invariant $ρ(X,E,H)$ is independent of the choice of metrics on $X$ and $E$ and of the representative $H$ in the cohomology class $[H]$. We establish some basic functorial properties of the twisted rho invariant. We express the twisted eta …
We present homotopy theoretic and geometric interpretations of the Kane-Mele invariant for gapped fermionic quantum systems in three dimensions with time-reversal symmetry. We show that the invariant is related to a certain 4-equivalence which lends it an interpretation as an obstruction to a block decomposition of the sewing matrix up to nonequivariant homotopy. We prove a Mayer-Vietoris Theorem for manifolds with $\mathbb{Z}_2$-actions which intertwines Real and $\mathbb{Z}_2$-equivariant de Rham cohomology groups, and apply it to derive a new localisation formula for the Kane-Mele invariant…
We introduce new invariants of Hamiltonian fibrations with values in the suitably twisted K-theory of the base. Inspired by techniques of geometric quantization, our invariants arise from the family analytic index of a family of natural $Spin^c$-Dirac operators. As an application we give new examples of non-trivial Hamiltonian fibrations, that have not been previously detected by other methods. As one crucial ingredient we construct a potentially new homotopy equivalence map, with a certain naturality property, from $BU$ to the space of index $0$ Fredholm operators on a Hilbert space, using el…
This article surveys the relations among local and nonlocal invariants in Atiyah-Singer index theory. We discuss the local invariants that arise from the heat equation approach to the index theorem for geometric operators, as well as the nonlocal invariants (the eta invariant, the determinant of the Laplacian/analytic torsion) that occur in more refined index theorems, such as the determinant line bundle setting and the index theorem for families of manifolds with boundary. We also discuss the higher torsion forms of Bismut and Lott and their conjectured relation to the rational homotopy of th…
We study noncommutative eta- and rho-forms for homotopy equivalences. We prove a product formula for them and show that the rho-forms are well-defined on the structure set. We also define an index theoretic map from L-theory to C*-algebraic K-theory and show that it is compatible with the rho-forms. Our approach, which is based on methods of Hilsum-Skandalis and Piazza-Schick, also yields a unified analytic proof of the homotopy invariance of the higher signature class and of the L^2-signature for manifolds with boundary.
