Invariants of almost commuting unitaries (Q1174986)

Let \(U\), \(V\) be two \(n\times n\) unitary matrices with \(\|[U,V]\|=\| UV-VU\|\) small. There are two invariants with values in \(\mathbb{Z}\) defined for such pairs. The first one, denoted \(k(U,V)\) is defined via spectral theory. The second one, \(\omega(U,V)\) is by definition the winding number of the path \(t\mapsto\det((1-t)UV+tVU)\). It is shown that for \(\|[U,V]\|\) small enough these two coincide. Further, upper bounds for both are established.