The joint spectral flow and localization of the indices of elliptic operators (Q745114)

The notion of joint spectral flow for \(n\)-tuples of Fredholm operators are introduced from the following inlustrating examples (Example 3.2): Let \(\mathcal H\) be a separable Hilbert space, \(F_1 = \mathrm{Fred}(\mathcal H)\) the set of Fredholm operators in \(\mathcal H\). Following the spectral flow index theorem of Atiyah, Patodi and Singer [\textit{M. F. Atiyah} et al., Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 79, 71--99 (1976; Zbl 0325.58015)] the \textit{spectral flow} of a continuous family \(T : \mathbb S^1 \to F_1(\mathcal H)\) is defined as the canonical group isomorphism \(sf: \pi_1(F_1(\mathcal H)) \to \mathbb Z\), which is constructed in the following idea. For the family \(T = \{T_t\}_{t\in \mathbb S^1 }\) the essential spectrum of which is \(\sigma(T_t) = \{-1,+1\}\), for each \(t\in \mathbb S^1\), ``there exists a family of continuous functions \(j_i: [0,1] \to [-1,1]\) such that'' \(-1=j_0(t) \leq j_i \dots \leq j_m(t) = 1\) and \(\sigma(T_t) = \{j_0(t),\dots,j_m(t)\}\) for any \(t\in [0,1]\). Because \(t\) is running on the circle \(\mathbb S^1\), there exists some \(l\) such that \(j_k(t) = j_{k+l}(t), \forall t\in \mathbb S^1\). One defines \(sf(T) = l\). For a continuous family of self-adjoint Fredholm operators the spectral of which are \(\sigma(T(t)) = \{ 0, (t+1)/2, 1\}\) with one-dimensional eigenspace \(E_{(t+1)/2}\), its spectral flow is \(sf(T)=\mathbf 1\) which is realized as the generator of the group \(H^1(\mathbb S^1, \mathbb Z)\cong \mathbb Z\) and is identified with the generator \(\mathbf 1=[ \mathbb S^1 \hookrightarrow \mathrm{Sym}^\infty(\mathbb S^1,*)] \in [\mathbb S^1, \mathrm{Sym}^\infty(\mathbb S^1, *)]\cong \mathbb Z\). Because of the remarkable facts that the configuration space \(F(\mathbb S^n,*)\) represents the connective \(K\)-theory, and there is a canonical incslusion \(: F(\mathbb S^n,*)\) to the space \(P(\mathbb S^n,*)\) canonically homotopy equivalent to the infinite symmetric product of \((\mathbb S^n,*)\), the author proposed a generalization of notion spectral flow to the general case called \textit{joint spectral flow} \(jsf(T)\) as the evaluation \( \langle j_*[\{T(x) \}],[X] \rangle\) of the homomorphism \(j_*: \tilde{k}(X) \to H^n(X; \mathbb Z)\) from the generalized connective \(K\)-theory to integral cohomology, related to the the Chern-Dold character \(\mathrm{ch}_*: k(X)\otimes \mathbb Q \to H^n(X; \mathbb Q)\), , on the fundamental class \([X]\) of \(X\), for any continuous family of \(n\)-tuples of Fredholm operators \(T(x) = \{T_1(x),\dots,T_n(x)\}_{x\in X}\in F_n(\mathcal H)\), parametrized by an oriented closed manifold of dimension \(n\) (Definition 3.1). The author then ``apply it for some localization results of indices motivated by Witten's deformation of Dirac operators, and rephrase some analytic techniques in terms of topology.''