The Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index on manifolds with non-compact boundary (Q2024686)

The paper is well written, well documented and of huge interest in index theory. The paper deals with an intensive study of an index theory for a Callias-type operator \(\mathcal{D}\) (see Definition 3.4) on a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\) with boundary, \(\partial M\), which is non-compact. More explicitly, as in the work of \textit{N. Highson} [Int. J. Math. 1, No. 2, 189--210 (1990; Zbl 0714.58054)] on mod k index theory, the authors relate the index of \(\mathcal{D}\), \(index(\mathcal{D})\), to a much more simple index, on a simple manifold whose boundary decomposes into disjoint union of complete manifolds. Moreover, when the dimension of \(M\) is odd, they show that \(index(\mathcal{D})\) is invariant under deformations of the interior of \(M\) (see Theorem 7.5). This allows them to define the relative eta invariant associated to spectral sections for \(\mathcal{D}|_{\partial M}\) (see Definition 8.5 and Proposition 8.8).