Locally free actions of groupoids and proper topological correspondences

Abstract

Let $(G,α)$ and $(H,β)$ be locally compact Hausdorff groupoids with Haar systems, and let $(X,λ)$ be a topological correspondence from $(G,α)$ to $(H,β)$ which induce the ${C}^*$-correspondence $\mathcal{H}(X)\colon {C}^*(G,α)\to {C}^*(H,β)$. We give sufficient topological conditions which when satisfied the ${C}^*$-correspondence $\mathcal{H}(X)$ is proper, that is, the ${C}^*$-algebra ${C}^*(G,α)$ acts on the Hilbert ${C}^*(H,β)$-module ${H}(X)$ via the comapct operators. Thus a proper topological correspondence produces an element in ${KK}({C}^*(G,α),{C}^*(H,β))$.