In this article we give a comprehensive treatment of a `Clifford module flow along paths in the skew-adjoint Fredholm operators on a real Hilbert space that takes values in KO${}_{*}(mathbb{R})$ via the Clifford index of Atiyah-Bott-Shapiro. We develop its properties for both bounded and unbounded skew-adjoint operators including an axiomatic characterization. Our constructions and approach are motivated by the principle that [ text{spectral flow} = text{Fredholm index}. ] That is, we show how the KO--valued spectral flow relates to a KO-valued index by proving a Robbin-Salamon type result. The Kasparov product is also used to establish a spectral flow $=$ Fredholm index result at the level of bivariant K-theory. We explain how our results incorporate previous applications of $mathbb{Z}/ 2mathbb{Z}$-valued spectral flow in the study of topological phases of matter.
An analytic definition of a $mathbb{Z}_2$-valued spectral flow for paths of real skew-adjoint Fredholm operators is given. It counts the parity of the number of changes in the orientation of the eigenfunctions at eigenvalue crossings through $0$ along the path. The $mathbb{Z}_2$-valued spectral flow is shown to satisfy a concatenation property and homotopy invariance, and it provides an isomorphism on the fundamental group of the real skew-adjoint Fredholm operators. Moreover, it is connected to a $mathbb{Z}_2$-index pairing for suitable paths. Applications concern the zero energy bound states at defects in a Majorana chain and a spectral flow interpretation for the $mathbb{Z}_2$-polarization in these models.
Let $L$ be a non-negative self-adjoint operator acting on the space $L^2(X)$, where $X$ is a metric measure space. Let ${ L}=int_0^{infty} lambda dE_{ L}({lambda})$ be the spectral resolution of ${ L}$ and $S_R({ L})f=int_0^R dE_{ L}(lambda) f$ denote the spherical partial sums in terms of the resolution of ${ L}$. In this article we give a sufficient condition on $L$ such that $$ lim_{Rrightarrow infty} S_R({ L})f(x) =f(x), {rm a.e.} $$ for any $f$ such that ${rm log } (2+L) fin L^2(X)$. These results are applicable to large classes of operators including Dirichlet operators on smooth bounded domains, the Hermite operator and Schrodinger operators with inverse square potentials.
In cite{APSIII} 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 cite{RS95}. In cite{GLMST}, 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 cite{Pu08}. 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 $p^{th}$ Schatten class condition for $0leq p<infty$, thus allowing differential operators on manifolds of any dimension $d<p+1$. In fact our main result does not assume any ellipticity or Fredholm properties at all and proves an operator theoretic trace formula motivated by cite{BCPRSW, CGK16}. This leads us to introduce a notion of `generalised spectral flow for such paths and to investigate its properties.
It has been shown recently that spectral flow admits a natural integer-valued extension to essential spectrum. This extension admits four different interpretations; two of them are singular spectral shift function and total resonance index. In this work we study resonance index outside essential spectrum. Among results of this paper are the following. 1. Total resonance index satisfies Robbin-Salamon axioms for spectral flow. 2. Direct proof of equality total resonance index = intersection number. 3. Direct proof of equality total resonance index = total Fredholm index. 4. (a) Criteria for a perturbation~$V$ to be tangent to the~resonance set at a point~$H,$ where the resonance set is the infinite-dimensional variety of self-adjoint perturbations of the initial self-adjoint operator~$H_0$ which have~$lambda$ as an eigenvalue. (b) Criteria for the order of tangency of a perturbation~$V$ to the resonance set. 5. Investigation of the root space of the compact operator $(H_0+sV-lambda)^{-1}V$ corresponding to an eigenvalue $(s-r_lambda)^{-1},$ where $H_0+r_lambda V$ is a point of the resonance set. This analysis gives a finer information about behaviour of discrete spectrum compared to spectral flow. Finally, many results of this paper are non-trivial even in finite dimensions, in which case they can be and were tested in numerical experiments.
We prove two results about nonunital index theory left open by [CGRS2]. The first is that the spectral triple arising from an action of the reals on a C*-algebra with invariant trace satisfies the hypotheses of the nonunital local index formula. The second result concerns the meaning of spectral flow in the nonunital case. For the special case of paths arising from the odd index pairing for smooth spectral triples in the nonunital setting we are able to connect with earlier approaches to the analytic definition of spectral flow.