Fredholm modules over categories, Connes periodicity and classes in cyclic cohomology

Abstract

We replace a ring with a small $\mathbb C$-linear category $\mathcal{C}$, seen as a ring with several objects in the sense of Mitchell. We introduce Fredholm modules over this category and construct a Chern character taking values in the cyclic cohomology of $\mathcal C$. We show that this categorified Chern character is homotopy invariant and is well-behaved with respect to the periodicity operator in cyclic cohomology. For this, we also obtain a description of cocycles and coboundaries in the cyclic cohomology of $\mathcal C$ (and more generally, in the Hopf-cyclic cohomology of a Hopf module category) by means of DG-semicategories equipped with a trace on endomorphism spaces.