Geometric \(K\)-homology and controlled paths (Q1292233)

\(K\)-homology has been defined in several ways, and in this paper a variant of Baum's geometric theory is used. A \(K\)-cycle for a topological space \(X\) is a triple \((M,S,g)\) such that: \(M\) is a smooth oriented Riemannian manifold, \(S\) is a Clifford bundle on \(M\), \(g:M\to X\) is a continuous map. Let \((Y,d)\) be a metric space, \({\mathcal H}\) be a Hilbert space equipped with an action of \(C(Y)\). A bounded operator \(F\) on \({\mathcal H}\) is said to have finite propagation if there is a constant \(N>0\) such that \(\phi F\psi= 0\) whenever \(\phi,\psi\in C(Y)\) have \(d(\text{supp}(\phi), \text{supp}(\psi))> N\) (the smallest such \(N\) is called the propagation of \(F\)). An \(\varepsilon\)-compression of an operator \(F\) is an operator \(F_\varepsilon\) satisfying the following conditions: \(F_\varepsilon\) is a trace class perturbation of \(F\), the propagation of \(F_\varepsilon\) is no more then \(\varepsilon\). It is said that a path \(F_t\) of operators on \({\mathcal H}\) has polynomial growth if there is a polynomial \(p\) such that given \(\varepsilon>0\), for every \(t\) there is an \(\varepsilon\)-compression of \(F_t\), \(F_{t,\varepsilon}\), satisfying \(\|F_t- F_{t,\varepsilon}\|_1< p(1/\varepsilon)\), where \(\|\cdot\|_1\) is the trace norm. A path \(F_t\) is called a controlled path if it has polynomial growth and the following is true: the paths \(F^2_t-1\) and \(F_t(F^2_t- 1)\) are made up of trace class operators and are trace-norm continuous and piecewise continuously differentiable in the trace norm. The following is the main result of the paper. Theorem 3.8. Let \(Y\) be a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary. Let \((M,S,g)\), \((M',S',g')\) be two equivalent \(K\)-cycles on \(Y\) and suppose that \(g:M\to Y\), \(g': M'\to Y\) are Lipschitz maps. Let \(\chi\) be a chopping function such that: the derivative of \(\chi\) is Schwartz class, the Fourier transform \({\mathcal F}(\chi)\) of \(\chi\) is smooth and \(\text{supp}({\mathcal F}(\chi))\subset [-1,1]\), the functions \((\chi^2-1)\) and \(\chi(\chi^2- 1)\) are Schwartz class and \(\text{supp}({\mathcal F}(\chi^2- 1))\), \(\text{supp}({\mathcal F}\chi(\chi^2- 1))\subset [-1,1]\). Let \(D_S\), \(D_{S'}\) be Dirac operators of the Clifford bundles \(S\), \(S'\) respectively. Then there are degenerate operators \(A\), \(A'\) such that the following properties hold: \(\chi(D_S)\oplus A\), \(A'\oplus\chi(D_{S'})\) are defined on the same Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\) equipped with an action of \(C(Y)\), \(\chi(D_S)\oplus A\) is connected to \(A'\oplus \chi(D_{S'})\) by a controlled path.