Spectral Flow Formula Research Articles

The Witten index and the spectral shift function

In [Spectral asymmetry and Riemannian geometry. III, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 79 (1976) 71–99] Atiyah, Patodi and Singer introduced spectral flow for elliptic operators on odd-dimensional compact manifolds. They argued that it could be computed from the Fredholm index of an elliptic operator on a manifold of one higher dimension. A general proof of this fact was produced by Robbin–Salamon [The spectral flow and the Maslov index, Bull. London Math. Soc. 27(1) (1995) 1–33, MR 1331677]. In [F. Gesztesy, Y. Latushkin, K. Makarov, F. Sukochev and Y. Tomilov, The index formula and the spectral shift function for relatively trace class perturbations, Adv. Math. 227(1) (2011) 319–420, MR 2782197], a start was made on extending these ideas to operators with some essential spectrum as occurs on non-compact manifolds. The new ingredient introduced there was to exploit scattering theory following the fundamental paper [A. Pushnitski, The spectral flow, the Fredholm index, and the spectral shift function, in Spectral Theory of Differential Operators, American Mathematical Society Translations: Series 2, Vol. 225 (American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2008), pp. 141–155, MR 2509781]. These results do not apply to differential operators directly, only to pseudo-differential operators on manifolds, due to the restrictive assumption that spectral flow is considered between an operator and its perturbation by a relatively trace-class operator. In this paper, we extend the main results of these earlier papers to spectral flow between an operator and a perturbation satisfying a higher pth Schatten class condition for [Formula: see text], thus allowing differential operators on manifolds of any dimension [Formula: see text]. In fact our main result does not assume any ellipticity or Fredholm properties at all and proves an operator theoretic trace formula motivated by [M.-T. Benameur, A. Carey, J. Phillips, A. Rennie, F. Sukochev and K. Wojciechowski, An analytic approach to spectral flow in von Neumann algebras, in Analysis, Geometry and Topology of Elliptic Operators (World Scientific Publisher, Hackensack, NJ, 2006), pp. 297–352, MR 2246773; A. Carey, H. Grosse and J. Kaad, On a spectral flow formula for the homological index, Adv. Math. 289 (2016) 1106–1156, MR 3439708]. We illustrate our results using Dirac type operators on [Formula: see text] for arbitrary [Formula: see text] (see Sec. 8). In this setting Theorem 6.4 substantially extends Theorem 3.5 of [A. Carey, F. Gesztesy, H. Grosse, G. Levitina, D. Potapov, F. Sukochev and D. Zanin, Trace formulas for a class of non-Fredholm operators: a review, Rev. Math. Phys. 28(10) (2016) 1630002, MR 3572626], where the case d = 1 was treated.

Spectral flow, Brouwer degree and Hill's determinant formula

In 2005 a new topological invariant defined in terms of the Brouwer degree of a determinant map, was introduced by Musso, Pejsachowicz and the first name author for counting the conjugate points along a semi-Riemannian geodesic. This invariant was defined in terms of a suspension of a complexified family of linear second order Dirichlet boundary value problems.In this paper, starting from this result, we generalize this invariant to a general self-adjoint Morse-Sturm system and we prove a new spectral flow formula. Finally we discuss the relation between this spectral flow formula and the Hill's determinant formula and we apply this invariant for detecting instability of periodic orbits of a Hamiltonian system.

Decomposition of spectral flow and Bott-type iteration formula

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Let <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">$ A(t) $</tex-math></inline-formula> be a continuous path of self-adjoint Fredholm operators, we derive a decomposition formula of spectral flow if the path is invariant under a matrix-like cogredient. As applications, we give the generalized Bott-type iteration formula for linear Hamiltonian systems.</p>

The Maslov index and the spectral flow\u2014revisited

We give an elementary proof of a celebrated theorem of Cappell, Lee and Miller which relates the Maslov index of a pair of paths of Lagrangian subspaces to the spectral flow of an associated path of self-adjoint first-order operators.We particularly pay attention to the continuity of the latter path of operators, where we consider the gap-metric on the set of all closed operators on a Hilbert space. Finally, we obtain from Cappell, Lee and Miller’s theorem a spectral flow formula for linear Hamiltonian systems which generalises a recent result of Hu and Portaluri.

Integral Formula for Spectral Flow for -Summable Operators

AbstractFix a von Neumann algebra ${\mathcal{N}}$ equipped with a suitable trace $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$. For a path of self-adjoint Breuer–Fredholm operators, the spectral flow measures the net amount of spectrum that moves from negative to non-negative. We consider specifically the case of paths of bounded perturbations of a fixed unbounded self-adjoint Breuer–Fredholm operator affiliated with ${\mathcal{N}}$. If the unbounded operator is $p$-summable (that is, its resolvents are contained in the ideal $L^{p}$), then it is possible to obtain an integral formula that calculates spectral flow. This integral formula was first proved by Carey and Phillips, building on earlier approaches of Phillips. Their proof was based on first obtaining a formula for the larger class of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$-summable operators, and then using Laplace transforms to obtain a $p$-summable formula. In this paper, we present a direct proof of the $p$-summable formula that is both shorter and simpler than theirs.

The Maslov Index in Symplectic Banach Spaces

We consider a curve of Fredholm pairs of Lagrangian subspaces in a fixed Banach space with continuously varying (weak) symplectic structures. Assuming vanishing index, we obtain intrinsically a continuously varying splitting of the total Banach space into pairs of symplectic subspaces. Using such decompositions we define the curve's Maslov index by symplectic reduction to the classical finite-dimensional case. We prove the transitivity of repeated symplectic reductions and obtain the invariance of the Maslov index under symplectic reduction, while recovering all the standard properties of the Maslov index. As an application, we consider curves of elliptic operators which have varying principal symbol, varying maximal domain and are not necessarily of Dirac type. For this class of operator curves, we derive a desuspension spectral flow formula for varying well-posed boundary conditions on manifolds with boundary and obtain the splitting of the spectral flow on partitioned manifolds.

The Maslov index and the spectra of second order elliptic operators

We consider second order elliptic differential operators on a bounded Lipschitz domain Ω. Firstly, we establish a natural one-to-one correspondence between their self-adjoint extensions, with domains of definition containing in H1(Ω), and Lagrangian planes in H1/2(∂Ω)×H−1/2(∂Ω). Secondly, we derive a formula relating the spectral flow of the one-parameter families of such operators to the Maslov index, the topological invariant counting the signed number of conjugate points of paths of Lagrangian planes in H1/2(∂Ω)×H−1/2(∂Ω). Furthermore, we compute the Morse index, the number of negative eigenvalues, in terms of the Maslov index for several classes of the second order operators: the θ→-periodic Schrödinger operators on a period cell Q⊂Rn, the elliptic operators with Robin-type boundary conditions, and the abstract self-adjoint extensions of the Schrödinger operators on star-shaped domains. Our work is built on the techniques recently developed by B. Booß-Bavnbek, K. Furutani, and C. Zhu, and extends the scope of validity of their spectral flow formula by incorporating the self-adjoint extensions of the second order operators with domains in the first order Sobolev space H1(Ω). In addition, we generalize the results concerning relations between the Maslov and Morse indices quite recently obtained by G. Cox, J. Deng, C. Jones, J. Marzuola, A. Sukhtayev and the authors. Finally, we describe and study a link between the theory of abstract boundary triples and the Lagrangian description of self-adjoint extensions of abstract symmetric operators.

Index theory for heteroclinic orbits of Hamiltonian systems

Index theory revealed its outstanding role in the study of periodic orbits of Hamiltonian systems and the dynamical consequences of this theory are enormous. Although the index theory in the periodic case is well-established, very few results are known in the case of homoclinic orbits of Hamiltonian systems. Moreover, to the authors’ knowledge, no results have been yet proved in the case of heteroclinic and halfclinic (i.e. parametrized by a half-line) orbits. Motivated by the importance played by these motions in understanding several challenging problems in Classical Mechanics, we develop a new index theory and we prove at once a general spectral flow formula for heteroclinic, homoclinic and halfclinic trajectories. Finally we show how this index theory can be used to recover all the (classical) existing results on orbits parametrized by bounded intervals.

On a spectral flow formula for the homological index

Consider a selfadjoint unbounded operator D on a Hilbert space H and a one parameter norm continuous family of selfadjoint bounded operators {A(t)|t∈R} that converges in norm to asymptotes A± at ±∞. Then under certain conditions [22] that include the assumption that the operators {D(t)=D+A(t),t∈R} all have discrete spectrum the spectral flow along the path {D(t)} can be shown to be equal to the index of ∂t+D(t) when the latter is an unbounded Fredholm operator on L2(R,H). In [16] an investigation of the index = spectral flow question when the operators in the path may have some essential spectrum was started but under restrictive assumptions that rule out differential operators in general. In [11] the question of what happens when the Fredholm condition is dropped altogether was investigated. In these circumstances the Fredholm index is replaced by the Witten index.In this paper we take the investigation begun in [11] much further. We show how to generalize a formula known from the setting of the L2 index theorem to the non-Fredholm setting. Restricting back to the case of selfadjoint Fredholm operators our formula extends the result of [22] in the sense of relaxing the discrete spectrum condition. It also generalizes some other Fredholm operator results of [21,16,11] that permit essential spectrum for the operators in the path. Our result may also apply however when the operators {D(t)} have essential spectrum equal to the whole real line.Our main theorem gives a trace formula relating the homological index of [7] to an integral formula that is known, for a path of selfadjoint Fredholms with compact resolvent and with unitarily equivalent endpoints, to compute spectral flow. Our formula however, applies to paths of selfadjoint non-Fredholm operators. We interpret this as indicating there is a generalization of spectral flow to the non-Fredholm setting.

Spectral flow, crossing forms and homoclinics of Hamiltonian systems

We prove a spectral flow formula for one-parameter families of Hamiltonian systems under homoclinic boundary conditions, which relates the spectral flow to the relative Maslov index of a pair of curves of Lagrangians induced by the stable and unstable subspaces, respectively. Finally, we deduce sufficient conditions for bifurcation of homoclinic trajectories of one-parameter families of nonautonomous Hamiltonian vector fields.

The Spectral Shift Function and Spectral Flow

At the 1974 International Congress, I. M. Singer proposed that eta invariants and hence spectral flow should be thought of as the integral of a one form. In the intervening years this idea has lead to many interesting developments in the study of both eta invariants and spectral flow. Using ideas of [24] Singer’s proposal was brought to an advanced level in [16] where a very general formula for spectral flow as the integral of a one form was produced in the framework of noncommutative geometry. This formula can be used for computing spectral flow in a general semifinite von Neumann algebra as described and reviewed in [5]. In the present paper we take the analytic approach to spectral flow much further by giving a large family of formulae for spectral flow between a pair of unbounded self-adjoint operators D and D + V with D having compact resolvent belonging to a general semifinite von Neumann algebra $${\mathcal{N}}$$ and the perturbation $$V \in {\mathcal{N}}$$ . In noncommutative geometry terms we remove summability hypotheses. This level of generality is made possible by introducing a new idea from [3]. There it was observed that M. G. Krein’s spectral shift function (in certain restricted cases with V trace class) computes spectral flow. The present paper extends Krein’s theory to the setting of semifinite spectral triples where D has compact resolvent belonging to $${\mathcal{N}}$$ and V is any bounded self-adjoint operator in $${\mathcal{N}}$$ . We give a definition of the spectral shift function under these hypotheses and show that it computes spectral flow. This is made possible by the understanding discovered in the present paper of the interplay between spectral shift function theory and the analytic theory of spectral flow. It is this interplay that enables us to take Singer’s idea much further to create a large class of one forms whose integrals calculate spectral flow. These advances depend critically on a new approach to the calculus of functions of non-commuting operators discovered in [3] which generalizes the double operator integral formalism of [8–10]. One surprising conclusion that follows from our results is that the Krein spectral shift function is computed, in certain circumstances, by the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem [2].

General spectral flow formula for fixed maximal domain

Abstract We consider a continuous curve of linear elliptic formally self-adjoint differential operators of first order with smooth coefficients over a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary together with a continuous curve of global elliptic boundary value problems. We express the spectral flow of the resulting continuous family of (unbounded) self-adjoint Fredholm operators in terms of the Maslov index of two related curves of Lagrangian spaces. One curve is given by the varying domains, the other by the Cauchy data spaces. We provide rigorous definitions of the underlying concepts of spectral theory and symplectic analysis and give a full (and surprisingly short) proof of our General Spectral Flow Formula for the case of fixed maximal domain. As a side result, we establish local stability of weak inner unique continuation property (UCP) and explain its role for parameter dependent spectral theory.

The local index formula in semifinite Von Neumann algebras I: Spectral flow

We generalise the local index formula of Connes and Moscovici to the case of spectral triples for a * -subalgebra A of a general semifinite von Neumann algebra. In this setting it gives a formula for spectral flow along a path joining an unbounded self-adjoint Breuer–Fredholm operator, affiliated to the von Neumann algebra, to a unitarily equivalent operator. Our proof is novel even in the setting of the original theorem and relies on the introduction of a function valued cocycle which is ‘almost’ a ( b , B ) -cocycle in the cyclic cohomology of A .

On Fredholm properties of Lu = u′ − A(t)u for paths of sectorial operators

We consider a path of sectorial operators t ↦ A (t) ∈ Cα (R, L (D, X)), 0 < α < 1, in general Banach space X, with common domain D (A (t)) = D and with hyperbolic limits at ±∞. We prove that there exist exponential dichotomies in the half-lines (−∞, −T] and [T, +∞) for large T, and we study the operator (Lu)(t) = u′(t) − A(t)u(t) in the space Cα (R, D) ∩ C1+α (R, X). In particular, we give sufficient conditions in order that L is a Fredholm operator. In this case, the index of L is given by an explicit formula, which coincides to the well-known spectral flow formula in finite dimension. Such sufficient conditions are satisfied, for instance, if the embedding D ↪ X is compact.

A New Short Proof of the Local Index Formula and Some of Its Applications

We give a new short proof of the index formula of Atiyah and Singer based on combining Getzler’s rescaling with Greiner’s approach of the heat kernel asymptotics. As an application we can easily compute the CM cyclic cocycle of even and odd Dirac spectral triples, and then recover the Atiyah-Singer index formula (even case) and the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer spectral flow formula (odd case).

A New Short Proof of the Local Index Formula and Some of Its Applications

We give a new short proof of the index formula of Atiyah and Singer based on combining Getzler's rescaling with Greiner's approach of the heat kernel asymptotics. As application we can easily compute the Connes-Moscovici cyclic cocycle of even and odd Dirac spectral triples, and then recover the Atiyah-Singer index formula (even case) and the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer spectral flow formula (odd case).

Maslov index in the infinite dimension and a splitting formula for a spectral flow

First, we prove a local spectral flow formula (Theorem 3.7) for a differentiable curve of selfadjoint Fredholm operators. This formula enables us to prove in a simple way a general spectral flow formula. Secondly, we prove a splitting formula (Theorem 4.12) for the spectral flow of a curve of selfadjoint elliptic operators on a closed manifold, which we decompose into two parts with commom boundary. Then the formula says that the spectral flow is a sum of two spectral flows on each part of the separated manifold with naturally introduced elliptic boundary conditions. In the course of proving this formula, we investigate a property of the Maslov index for paths of Fredholm pairs of Lagrangian subspaces

Criss-Cross Reduction of the Maslov Index and a Proof of the Yoshida-Nicolaescu Theorem

We consider direct sum decompositions $\beta=\beta_{-}+\beta_{+}$ and $L=L_{-}+L_{+}$ of two symplectic Hilbert spaces by Lagrangian subspaces with dense embeddings $\beta_{-}\hookrightarrow L-$ and $L_{+}\hookrightarrow\beta_{+}$. We show that such criss-cross embeddings induce a continuous mapping between the Fredholm Lagrangian Grassmannians $\mathcal{F}\mathcal{L}_{\beta_{-}}(\beta)$ and $\mathcal{F}\mathcal{L}_{L_{-}}(L)$ which preserves the Maslov index for curves. This gives a slight generalization and a new proof of the Yoshida-Nicolaescu Spectral Flow Formula for families of Dirac operators over partitioned manifolds.

The Maslov Index: a Functional Analytical Definition and the Spectral Flow Formula

We give a functional analytical definition of the Maslov index for continuous curves in the Fredholm-Lagrangian Grassmannian. Our definition does not require assumptions either at the endpoints or at the crossings of the curve with the Maslov cycle. We demonstrate an application of our definition by developing the symplectic geometry of self-adjoint extensions of unbounded symmetric operators. We discuss continuous variations of the form $A_D+C_t$, where $A_D$ is a fixed self-adjoint unbounded Fredholm operator and $\{C_t\}$ a family of bounded self-adjoint operators. We extend the definition of the spectral flow to such families of unbounded operators in a purely functional analytical way. We then prove that the spectral flow is equal to the Maslov index of the corresponding family of abstract Cauchy data spaces.