Spectral flow in Fredholm modules, eta invariants and the JLO cocycle (Q1826487)

The authors provide formulas for the spectral flow along paths of self-adjoint Breuer-Fredholm operators. The approach is general enough to apply to unbounded \(\theta\)-summable Breuer-Fredholm modules in both the I\(_{\infty}\) and II\(_{\infty}\) settings. The results in this paper extend many previous results, including particularly those of the authors [\textit{A. Carey} and \textit{J. Phillips}, Can. J. Math. 50, 673--718 (1998; Zbl 0915.46063)] and of \textit{E. Getzler} [Topology 32, 489--507 (1993; Zbl 0801.46088)]. The paper's spectral flow formulas, including terms that generalize truncated eta invariants, can be interpreted as path integrals of differential one-forms defined on affine spaces of operators. When the spectral flow is between an operator and its conjugation by a unitary operator, the formula can be interpreted as the result of a Chern character pairing between the \(K\)-theory class of the unitary and an entire cyclic cocycle (JLO cocycle) defined by the operator. Under this interpretation this paper may be viewed as a fundamental contribution to type II index theory in noncommutative geometry. Further work in that direction appears in \textit{A. L. Carey}, \textit{J. Phillips}, and \textit{F. A. Sukochev} [Adv. Math. 173, 68--113 (2003; Zbl 1015.19003)].