K-theory and perturbations of absolutely continuous spectra

We study the K_0 group of the commutant modulo a normed ideal of an n-tuple of commuting Hermitian operators in some of the simplest cases. In case n=1, the results, under some technical conditions are rather complete and show the key role of the absolutely continuous part when the ideal is the trace-class. For a commuting n-tuple, n>2 and the Lorentz (n, 1) ideal, we show under an absolute continuity assumption that the commutant determines a canonical direct summand in K_0. Also, certain properties involving the compact ideal, established assuming quasicentral approximate units mod the normed ideal, have weaker versions which hold assuming only finiteness of the obstruction to quasicentral approximate units.