Paper detail

Topological invariance of the homological index

R. W. Carey and J. Pincus in [CaPi86] proposed and index theory for non-Fredholm bounded operators T on a separable Hilbert space H such that TT* - T*T is in the trace class. We showed in [CGK13] using Dirac-type operators acting on sections of bundles over R^{2n} that we could construct bounded operators T satisfying the more general condition that (1-TT*)^n - (1-T*T)^n is trace class. We proposed there a "homological" index for these Dirac-type operators given by Tr( (1-TT*)^n - (1-T*T)^n ). In this paper we show that the index introduced in [CGK13] represents the result of a pairing between a cyclic homology theory for the algebra generated by T and T* and its dual cohomology theory. This leads us to establish homotopy invariance of our homological index (in the sense of cyclic theory). We are then able to define in a very general fashion a homological index for certain unbounded operators and prove invariance of this index under a class of unbounded perturbations.