Elliptic Operators and Higher Signatures

The main result of this paper is the $G$-homotopy invariance of the $G$-index of signature operator of proper co-compact $G$-manifolds. If proper co-compact $G$ manifolds $X$ and $Y$ are $G$-homotopy equivalent, then we prove that the images of their signature operators by the $G$-index map are the same in the $K$-theory of the $C^{*}$-algebra of the group $G$. Neither discreteness of the locally compact group $G$ nor freeness of the action of $G$ on $X$ are required, so this...

We give a simple proof of the cobordism invariance of the index of an elliptic operator. The proof is based on a study of a Witten-type deformation of an extension of the operator to a complete Riemannian manifold. One of the advantages of our approach is that it allows to treat directly general elliptic operator which are not of Dirac type.

We develop elliptic theory of operators associated with a diffeomorphism of a closed smooth manifold. The aim of the present paper is to obtain an index formula for such operators in terms of topological invariants of the manifold and of the symbol of the operator. The symbol in this situation is an element of a certain crossed product. We express the index as the pairing of the class in K-theory defined by the symbol and the Todd class in periodic cyclic cohomology of the cr...

Let us consider a compact oriented riemannian manifold M without boundary and of dimension n=4k. The signature of M is defined as the signature of a given quadratic form Q. Two different products could be used to define Q and they render equivalent definitions: the exterior product of 2k-forms and the cup product of cohomology classes. The signature of a manifold is proved to yield a topological invariant. Additionally, using the metric, a suitable Dirac operator can be defin...

We show that elliptic classes introduced in our earlier paper for spaces with infinite fundamental groups yield Novikov's type higher elliptic genera which are invariants of K-equivalence. This include, as a special case, the birational invariance of higher Todd classes studied recently by J.Rosenberg and J.Block-S.Weinberger. We also prove the modular properties of these genera, show that they satisfy a McKay correspondence, and consider their twist by discrete torsion.

In this first part of the paper, we define a natural dual object for manifolds with corners and show how pseudodifferential calculus on such manifolds can be constructed in terms of the localization principle in C*-algebras. In the second part, these results will be applied to the solution of Gelfand's problem on the homotopy classification of elliptic operators for the case of manifolds with corners.

The main result of this paper is a new and direct proof of the natural transformation from the surgery exact sequence in topology to the analytic K-theory sequence of Higson and Roe. Our approach makes crucial use of analytic properties and new index theorems for the signature operator on Galois coverings with boundary. These are of independent interest and form the second main theme of the paper. The main technical novelty is the use of large scale index theory for Dirac t...

In work of Higson-Roe the fundamental role of the signature as a homotopy and bordism invariant for oriented manifolds is made manifest in how it and related secondary invariants define a natural transformation between the (Browder-Novikov-Sullivan-Wall) surgery exact sequence and a long exact sequence of C*-algebra K-theory groups. In recent years the (higher) signature invariants have been extended from closed oriented manifolds to a class of stratified spaces known as L-...

In this paper, we prove the strong relative Novikov conjecture for any pair of groups that are coarsely embeddable into Hilbert space. As an application, we show that the relative Novikov conjecture on the homotopy invariance of relative higher signatures holds for manifolds with boundary, provided the fundamental groups of the manifolds and their boundary are coarsely embeddable into Hilbert space.

This is an expository paper which gives a proof of the Atiyah-Singer index theorem for elliptic operators. Specifcally, we compute the geometric K-cycle that corresponds to the analytic K-cycle determined by the operator. This paper and its companion ("K-homology and index theory II: Dirac Operators") was written to clear up basic points about index theory that are generally accepted as valid, but for which no proof has been published. Some of these points are needed for the ...