The Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index and domain-wall fermion Dirac operators (Q2216773)

The main goal of the paper is to express the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index in terms of the eta invariant of domain-wall fermion Dirac operators. The situation is as follows: \(X\) is an even-dimensional, closed, oriented Riemannian manifold, \(S\) is a \(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\)-graded hermitian vector bundle on \(X\) with grading operator \(\Gamma_S\) and \(D \colon C^\infty(X;S) \to C^\infty(X;S)\) a first-order, formally self-adjoint, elliptic partial differential operator anti-commuting with \(\Gamma_S\). Further, \(Y \subset X\) is a separating submanifold decomposing \(X\) into \(X_\pm\), \(\kappa \colon X \to [-1,1]\) is an \(L^\infty\)-function with \(\kappa \equiv \pm 1\) on \(X_\pm \setminus Y\) and we assume that the Riemannian metric, the bundle \(S\) and the operator \(D\) have product structure in a collar neighbourhood of \(Y\). The latter entails, denoting the coordinate function of the collar by \(u\), that \(D\) is of the form \[ D = \begin{pmatrix} 0 & \partial_u + A \\ -\partial_u + A & 0 \end{pmatrix}\,, \] where \(A \colon C^\infty(Y;E) \to C^\infty(Y;E)\) is a formally self-adjoint, elliptic partial differential operator on sections in the vector bundle \(E\) arising from the product structure of \(S\) near \(Y\). The main theorem then reads as follows: If \(A\) has no zero eigenvalues, then there exists a constant \(m_0 > 0\) (depending only on \(X\), \(S\) and \(D\)) such that \[ \mathrm{Ind}_{\mathrm{APS}}(D|_{X_+}) = \frac{\eta_{D+m\kappa\Gamma_S}-\eta_{D-m\Gamma_S}}{2} \] for any \(m > m_0\).