Spectral flow is the integral of one forms on the Banach manifold of self adjoint Fredholm operators (Q734832)

The spectral flow was invented by Lusztig and applied first in geometry by Atiyah, Patodi and Singer. \textit{I. M. Singer} [Proc. Int. Congr. Math., Vancouver 1974, Vol.~1, 187--200 (1975; Zbl 0345.58014)] asked if the spectral flow can be expressed as an integral of a one-form, showing that this is possible for the eta invariant. \textit{J. Phillips} [Can. Math. Bull. 39, No.~4, 460--467 (1996; Zbl 0878.19001)] gave an analytic definition of the spectral flow using as a key ingredient a result of Getzler (1993) to produce a spectral flow as integrals of 1-forms on affine subspaces of the Banach manifold of self-adjoint Fredholm operators. Carey and Phillips (1998 and 2004) introduced an analytic method to answer Singer's question on the type I case and on type II\(_\infty\) von Neumann algebras. The paper under review exploits the key technical tool -- double operator integrals (DOI) -- and finds a new way to handle paths of unbounded self-adjoint Fredholm operators. This serves the principal aim of the paper to answer Singer's question in a general semifinite von Neumann algebra. Let \(\mathcal{M}\) be a semifinite von Neumann algebra with a normal semifinite faithful (n.s.f.) trace \(\tau\). Let the \(\tau\)-Calkin algebra be the quotient of \(\mathcal{M}\) by the norm closed ideal generated by the \(\tau\)-finite projections. An operator is \(\tau\)-Fredholm if it is invertible in the \(\tau\)-Calkin algebra. Suppose \(\{F_t\}_{0\leq t \leq 1}\in \mathcal{M}\) is a piecewise \(C^1\)-path of self-adjoint \(\tau\)-Fredholm operators with \(\|F_t\|\leq 1\) and the spectrum of the image of \(F_t\) in the \(\tau\)-Calkin algebra is \(\pm1\). If \(F_0\) and \(F_1\) are unitarily equivalent at the end of the path, then the spectral flow \(sf(F_t)\) has the analytic formula \[ sf(F_t) = \int_0^1 \tau (\dot{F}_t h(F_t)) \,dt, \] where \(h\) is a positive sufficiently smooth function on \([-1, 1]\) and is chosen such that \[ \int_0^1\| (\dot{F}_t h(F_t)) \|\,dt < \infty. \] In Section 3, the authors prove the analytic formula theorem of \(sf(F_t)\) for norm-differentiable paths in the Banach manifold of bounded self-adjoint \(\tau\)-Fredholm operators in a semifinite von Neumann algebra. In Section 4, the authors prove that, for two unbounded self-adjoint \(\tau\)-Fredholms \(D_0\) and \(D_1\), \(sf(F_t)\) is the integral of a 1-form defined on the affine space of \(D_0\)-graph norm bounded self-adjoint perturbations of \(D_0\), where \(F_t\) is a smooth path in the graph norm of \(D_0\). This result is stated in Theorem 9 and a strengthening of all previous results is given. The differentiability is a main difficulty in proving the spectral flow analytic formulae for the unbounded case. Using the DOI technique developed in Section 5, the authors resolve this differentiability issue in Section 6 and hence answer Singer's question for a semifinite von Neumann algebra.