English

Skew localizer and $\mathbb{Z}_2$-flows for real index pairings

Mathematical Physics 2021-08-17 v2 K-Theory and Homology math.MP

Abstract

Real index pairings of projections and unitaries on a separable Hilbert space with a real structure are defined when the projections and unitaries fulfill symmetry relations invoking the real structure, namely projections can be real, quaternionic, even or odd Lagrangian and unitaries can be real, quaternionic, symmetric or anti-symmetric. There are 6464 such real index pairings of real KK-theory with real KK-homology. For 1616 of them, the Noether index of the pairing vanishes, but there is a secondary Z2\mathbb{Z}_2-valued invariant. The first set of results provides index formulas expressing each of these 1616 Z2\mathbb{Z}_2-valued pairings as either an orientation flow or a half-spectral flow. The second and main set of results constructs the skew localizer for a pairing stemming from a Fredholm module and shows that the Z2\mathbb{Z}_2-invariant can be computed as the sign of its Pfaffian and in 88 of the cases as the sign of the determinant of its off-diagonal entry. This is of relevance for the numerical computation of invariants of topological insulators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.09226,
  title  = {Skew localizer and $\mathbb{Z}_2$-flows for real index pairings},
  author = {Nora Doll and Hermann Schulz-Baldes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.09226},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

numerous minor corrections, added references, to appear in Adv. Math