Refined analytic torsion as an element of the determinant line (Q873941)

The authors introduce and study the so-called refined analytic torsion associated to a flat vector bundle over a closed oriented smooth odd-dimensional manifold. This refined analytic torsion is an element in the graded determinant line of the cohomology with values in the flat vector bundle. Under additional assumptions this invariant has been studied in previous work by the authors, this paper covers the general case. The refined analytic torsion is defined with the help of a Riemannian metric on the base manifold. The associated Atiyah-Patodi-Singer odd signature operator is a first order elliptic differential operator acting on the space of differential forms with values in the flat vector bundle. Roughly speaking, the refined analytic torsion is defined as the graded zeta-regularized determinant of the odd signature operator's even part, multiplied by a correction term. The authors show that this is a differential invariant in the sense that it only depends on the flat vector bundle and not on the Riemannian metric. The authors then compare their refined analytic torsion with the Ray-Singer torsion. More precisely, they compute the Ray-Singer norm of the refined analytic torsion. The result is closely related to the imaginary part of the odd signature operator's eta invariant. Particularly, the Ray-Singer norm of the refined analytic torison is 1 if the flat connection is Hermitian. This comparison result is based on a relationship between the refined analytic torsion of a flat vector bundle and its dual, which is established in the paper.