Signatures and higher signatures of \(S^1\)-quotients (Q1568696)

An equivariant signature \(\sigma_{S^1}(M)\in{\mathbb Z}\) is defined for an \(S^1\)-action on a closed oriented smooth manifold \(M\). If the \(S^1\)-action is semifree (i.e.~every isotropy subgroup is either \(\{e\}\) or \(S^1\)) then \(\sigma_{S^1}(M)\) equals the sum of the integral of the \(L\)-form over \(M/S^1-M^{S^1}\) and of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer eta-invariant of the tangential signature operator on the fixed-point-set \(M^{S^1}\subset M\). Under certain assumptions on \(M^{S^1}\) equivariant higher signatures are defined too and it is proved that they are (smooth) topological invariants of the \(S^1\)-action. The author also defines the \(\widehat{A}\)-genus \(\widehat{A}_{S^1}(M)\in{\mathbb Z}\) for an even semifree \(S^1\)-action on a spin manifold and shows that it vanishes when \(M\) admits an \(S^1\)-invariant metric of positive scalar curvature under some technical assumptions on connected components of \(M^{S^1}\). In the special case when the quotient space \(M/S^1\) is a manifold (possibly with boundary), the equivariant (higher) signatures coincide with the usual (higher) signatures of \(M/S^1\).