Spectral flow for Dirac operators with magnetic links (Q2303830)

This paper is devoted to the study of the spectral properties of Dirac operators on \(\mathbb{S}^{3}\) with singular magnetic fields supported on smooth, oriented links. Consider a magnetic field \(\beta\) on \(\mathbb{S}^{3}\) with \(\beta=\beta_{\mathrm{r}}+\beta_{\mathrm{sing}}\), where \(\beta_{\mathrm{r}}\) is a regular smooth part and \(\beta_{\mathrm{sing}}\) is a singular part corresponding to a smooth, oriented \(K\)-link \[ \gamma=\bigcup_{k=1}^{K}\gamma_{k}\subset\mathbb{S}^{3} \] with fluxes \(2\pi\alpha_{k}\) on each connected component \(\gamma_{k}\), \(k=1,\dots,K\) of \(\gamma\). Making a gauge choice \(\beta=d\alpha\), associate a Dirac operator \(D_{\alpha}\) to the magnetic field \(\beta\). The authors study the spectral flow of paths of these Dirac operators \(D_{\alpha}\). In the special case of a link of unknots, the authors derive an explicit formula for the spectral flow of any loop on the torus of fluxes: suppose that \(\gamma_{1}\) is the realization of an unknot, then the spectral flow of the loop is defined only if \(\frac{1}{2}\left( 1-\mathrm{Wr}[\gamma_{1}]\right) -\frac{1}{2\pi}\Phi_{\beta}\left( \gamma_{1}\right) \notin\mathbb{Z}\), in which case \[ \mathrm{sf}\left( \left( D_{\alpha}\right) _{\alpha_{1}\in \lbrack0,1]}\right) =\left\lfloor \frac{1}{2}\left( 1-\mathrm{Wr} [\gamma_{1}]\right) -\frac{1}{2\pi}\Phi_{\beta}\left( \gamma_{1}\right) \right\rfloor , \] where \(\mathrm{Wr}[\gamma_{k}]\) is the writhe for \(\gamma_{k}\) and \(\Phi_{\beta}\left( \gamma_{k}\right) \) is the flux of the remaining magnetic field \(\beta^{\left( k\right) }\) through a Seifert surface \(S_{k}\) for \(\gamma_{k}\), given in terms of the linking numbers of the knots.