The relative Mishchenko-Fomenko higher index and almost flat bundles. II: Almost flat index pairing (Q2140250)

This paper is the second part of a series of papers (for part I, see [\textit{Y. Kubota}, J. Noncommut. Geom. 14, No. 3, 1209--1244 (2020; Zbl 1469.19010)]). It is a well-written, well-organized and well-detailed. It brings a valuable contribution to the study of the (relative) Baum-Connes conjecture for morphisms of groups. The author gives a relative version for the Hanke-Schick theorem [\textit{B. Hanke} et al., Ann. Inst. Fourier 65, No. 6, 2681--2710 (2015; Zbl 1344.58012); \textit{B. Hanke} and \textit{T. Schick}, J. Differ. Geom. 74, No. 2, 293--320 (2006; Zbl 1122.58011)], Theorem 3.3, through a mapping cone approach and the Chang-Weinberger-Yu relative higher index map [\textit{S. Chang} et al., J. Geom. Phys. 149, Article ID 103575, 22 p. (2020; Zbl 1437.58017)] (with his reformulations). As an application, he derives a refinement for a result of [\textit{B. Hanke} et al., Ann. Inst. Fourier 65, No. 6, 2681--2710 (2015; Zbl 1344.58012), which concern a vanishing result for the fundamental classes in \(K\)-homology of certain embeddings. Reviewer's remark: In my opinion, it would be interesting to reformulate Theorem 3.3 using the notion of higher spectral flow due to \textit{X. Dai} and \textit{W. Zhang} [J. Funct. Anal. 157, No. 2, 432--469 (1998; Zbl 0932.37062)].