Spectral sections, twisted rho invariants and positive scalar curvature (Q893797)

The authors show that the \(\rho\)-invariant \(\rho_{\mathrm{spin}}(Y, \mathcal E, H, g)\) (defined in their recent paper [J. Geom. Phys. 70, 39--47 (2013; Zbl 1282.58018); corrigendum ibid. 76, 263--264 (2014)]) associated to the twisted Dirac operator \(/\!\!\!{\partial}_H^{\mathcal E}\) is a conformal invariant of the pair \((Y, g)\). Here \((Y,g)\) is a closed odd-dimensional Riemannian spin manifold, \(H=\sum i^{j+1}H_{2j+1}\) is an odd-degree differential form on \(Y\) and \(\mathcal E\) is a flat Hermitian vector bundle over \(Y\). The authors express the defect \(\rho_{\mathrm{spin}}(Y, \mathcal E, H, g) - \rho_{\mathrm{spin}}(Y, \mathcal E, g)\) in terms of spectral flows and prove that \(\rho_{\mathrm{spin}}(Y, \mathcal E, H, g)\in \mathbb Q\) assuming that \(g\) has positive scalar curvature. The authors also give conditions for vanishing of the \(\rho\)-invariant \(\rho_{\mathrm{spin}}(Y, \mathcal E, H, g)\).