Fredholm anomalies on manifold with corners of low codimensions and conormal corner cycles

TL;DR

This paper computes conormal index morphisms for manifolds with corners of low codimension, linking geometric face data to analytical index obstructions for Fredholm perturbations.

Contribution

It explicitly calculates conormal index morphisms for manifolds with corners of codimension up to three, connecting face indices to Fredholm perturbation obstructions.

Findings

Explicit formulas for conormal index morphisms in low codimension cases

Characterization of Fredholm perturbation obstructions via face indices

Connection between geometric face data and analytical index theory

Abstract

Given a connected manifold with corners $X$ of any codimension there is a very basic and computable homology theory called conormal homology defined in terms of faces and orientations of their conormal bundles, and whose cycles correspond geometrically to corner's cycles, these conormal homology groups are denoted by $H^{cn}_*(X)$. Using our previous works we define an index morphism $$K^0(^bT^*X)\stackrel{Ind_{ev,cn}^X}{\longrightarrow}H_{ev}^{cn}(X)$$ for $X$ a manifold with corners of codimension less or equal to three and called here the even conormal index morphism. In the case that $X$ is compact and connected and $D$ is an elliptic $b-$pseudodifferential operator in the associated $b-$calculus of $X$ we know, by our previous works and other authors works, that, up to adding an identity operator, $D$ can be perturbed (with a regularizing operator in the calculus) to a Fredholm operator iff $Ind_{ev,cn}^X([\sigma_D])$ (where $[\sigma_D]\in K^0(^bT^*X)$ is the principal symbol class) vanishes in the even conormal homology group $H_{ev}^{cn}(X)$. The main result of this paper is the explicit computation of the even and odd conormal index morphisms $Ind_{ev/odd,cn}^X(\sigma)\in H_{ev/odd}^{cn}(X)$ for $X$ a manifold with corners of codimension less or equal to three. The coefficients of the conormal corner cycles $Ind_{ev/odd,cn}^X(\sigma)$ are given in terms of some suspended Atiyah-Singer indices of the maximal codimension faces of $X$ and in terms of some suspended Atiyah-Patodi-Singer indices of the non-maximal codimension faces of $X$. As a corollary we give a complete caracterization to the obstruction of the Fredholm perturbation property for closed manifolds with corners of codimension less or equal to three in terms of the above mentioned indices of the faces, this allows us as well to give such a characterization in terms of the respective topological indices.