Euler characteristics and Gysin sequences for group actions on boundaries (Q2491109)

The authors place in an exact sequence the maps \(K_{*}(C_{r}^{*}G) \rightarrow K_{*}(C_{r}^{*}(G,C(\partial X)))\) associated with the homomorphisms \(C_{r}^{*}G \rightarrow C_{r}^{*}(G,C(\partial X))\) induced by the unital inclusion of the complex numbers in \(C(\partial X)\). The group \(G\) and the space \(X\) must satisfy various conditions, the most prominent of which are: \(G\) is a locally compact group; \(X\) is a proper \(G\)-space that is an open \(G\)-invariant subspace of a compact \(G\)-space \(\overline{X}\) (notation: \(\partial X = \overline{X} \setminus X\)); both \(X\) and \(\overline{X}\) are \(H\)-equivariantly contractible for each compact subgroup \(H\) of \(G\); and \(G\) satisfies the Baum-Connes conjecture with trivial coefficients and with \(C(\partial X)\) coefficients. The role played by an equivariant Euler characteristic in the authors' exact sequences suggests an analogy with classical Gysin sequences. The paper includes discussions of a variety of examples as well as a detailed construction of a simplicial equivariant Euler characteristic. The paper's primary motivation seems to be the unification and generalization of many previous results identifying, for discrete torsion-free \(G\), when the unit element represents a torsion class in \(K_{0}(C_{r}^{*}(G,C(\partial X)))\). However the authors also note that their Gysin sequence provides a reason to view \(C_{r}^{*}(G,C(\partial X))\) as (the algebra of functions on) the cosphere bundle of the ``noncommutative space'' represented by \(C_{r}^{*}G\). In a related setting for different reasons, this view was suggested by \textit{A. Connes} and investigated by \textit{M. Rieffel} and others.