Anomalies of Dirac type operators on Euclidean space

DOI10.1007/S00220-014-2204-9MaRDI QIDQ2260719zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jens Kaad, A. L. Carey, H. Grosse

Publication date 11 March 2015

Published in Communications in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1796

Dirac operator index formula quantum action principle

(K)-theory and homology; cyclic homology and cohomology (19D55) Time-dependent Schrödinger equations and Dirac equations (35Q41) (K)-theory and operator algebras (including cyclic theory) (46L80) (Semi-) Fredholm operators; index theories (47A53)

Abstract: We develop by example a type of index theory for non-Fredholm operators. A general framework using cyclic homology for this notion of index was introduced in a separate article [CaKa13] where it may be seen to generalise earlier ideas of Carey-Pincus and Gesztesy-Simon on this problem. Motivated by an example in two dimensions in [BGG+87] we introduce in this paper a class of examples of Dirac type operators on R^{2n} that provide non-trivial examples of our homological approach. Our examples may be seen as extending old ideas about the notion of anomaly introduced by physicists to handle topological terms in quantum action principles with an important difference, namely we are dealing with purely geometric data that can be seen to arise from the continuous spectrum of our Dirac type operators.

Review text

In the theory of semi-normal operators, that is, bounded linear operators \(T\) on a Hilbert space subject to the compactness condition of the self-commutator \([T^\ast,T]\), the Fredholm index can naturally be interpreted as a boundary homomorphism at the level of \(K\)-theory, on the algebra generated by \(T\), modulo the compact operators. The case of ``smooth extensions of operator algebras, that is, when \([T^\ast,T]\) is in a Schatten-von Neumann class, led several groups of researchers in the 1970s to refine index type invariants. A notable example is the Helton-Howe and the Carey-Pincus theory of the principal function. The article under review reconsiders these old ideas from the practical point of view of spectral analysis of Dirac operators on Euclidean space. In a companion work, \textit{A. Carey} and \textit{J. Kaad} [``Topological invariance of the homological index, Preprint, \url{arXiv:1402.0475}], sketched a general framework for studying the analog of the Fredholm index for operators \(T\) subject to the condition that \((I-T^\ast T)^n - (I-T T^\ast)^n\) is trace class. As the index is no more invariant under all compact perturbations, but rather under small perturbation on the Schatten-von Neumann scale, \(K\)-theory is replaced by cyclic homology. Prompted by the physical motivation of the article, the leading term (known as an anomaly) in asymptotic formulas after scaling \[ I-T_\lambda T_\lambda^\ast = \lambda ( \lambda + D_+ D_-)^{-1} ,\dots \] is thoroughly analysed. The article offers a lucid and self-contained approach to a class of examples in non-classical index theory.

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