Vector partition functions and index of transversally elliptic operators (Q626568)

One general and useful setting of the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is for operators on a manifold which have a symmetry with respect to a compact Lie group and are elliptic in the directions transverse to the group orbits. In [Elliptic operators and compact groups. Lecture Notes in Mathematics. 401. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag (1974; Zbl 0297.58009)], \textit{M. F. Atiyah} explained how to reduce general computations to the case in which the Lie group is a torus and the manifold is a complex linear representation. When the Lie group is a circle, the computation can be done explicitly. For general tori, Atiyah points out that, to get explicit results, ``the development of an appropriate algebraic machinery'' is needed. The purpose of this paper is to provide this algebraic machinery and complete the computation. Let \(G\) be a torus acting linearly on a complex vector space \(M\) and let \(X\) be the list of weights of \(G\) in \(M\). The main theorem in this paper is to identify the topological equivariant \(K\)-theory group of the open subset of \(M\) consisting of points with finite stabilizers to the space \(DM(X)\) of functions on the character lattice \(\widehat{G}\), satisfying the cocircuit difference equations associated to \(X\). The space \(DM(X)\) was introduced by \textit{W. Dahmen} and \textit{C. A. Micchelli} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 308, No.~2, 509--532 (1988; Zbl 0655.10013)] in the context of the theory of splines in order to study vector partition functions. The main theorem in this paper allows the authors to determine the range of the index map from \(G\)-transversally elliptic operators on \(M\) to generalized functions on \(G\) and to prove that the index map is an isomorphism on the image. This is part of a series of papers by the authors on vector partition functions and the index theory of transversally elliptic operators; see also [ibid. 15, No.~4, 751--773 (2010; Zbl 1223.58015)].