Geometric \(K\)-theory for Lie groups and foliations (Q1594967)

This paper is a printed version of a preprint circulated in 1982 with some updated remarks and an extensive updated reference list appended at the end. It outlines with some details a geometrically defined \(K\)-theory involving group (or groupoid) actions, and proposes some important hard (and famous since then) conjectures. As a starting point for noncommutative geometry, the classical topological \(K\)-theory had been canonically adapted and generalized to an analytical \(K\)-theory of C*-algebras (or Banach algebras) which provides a natural context for the indices of elliptic operators, an important ingredient in the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. Although the analytical \(K\)-groups are fairly easy to define, they are often difficult to compute. On the other hand, the geometric \(K\)-groups, e.g. \(K^{\ast }\left( X,G\right) \) for a \(G\)-manifold \(X\), introduced in this paper involve topological machineries, e.g. the Thom isomorphism theorem and Gysin map, but can be more easily computed in some concrete cases than the corresponding analytical \(K\)-groups, e.g. \(K_{\ast }\left( C_{0}\left( X\right) \rtimes _{r}G\right) \) of the reduced cross-product C*-algebra \( C_{0}\left( X\right) \rtimes _{r}G\). A major conjecture proposed is the isomorphism between \(K^{\ast }\left( X,G\right) \) and \(K_{\ast }\left( C_{0}\left( X\right) \rtimes _{r}G\right) \) which is known to be true for proper \(G\)-manifolds \(X\) and is essentially the Atiyah-Singer index theorem in the case of compact groups \(G\). Variations of the geometric \(K\)-group \( K^{\ast }\left( X,G\right) \) involving discrete group \(G\) with a 2-cocycle or holonomy groupoid \(G\) of a foliation are also presented and discussed.