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arXiv · 2512.04968

Spectral flow and the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem

Christian Baer·Remo Ziemke
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Abstract

We establish a formula for the spectral flow of a smooth family of twisted Dirac operators on a closed odd-dimensional Riemannian spin manifold, generalizing a result by Getzler. The spectral flow is expressed in terms of the $\hat{A}$-form of the manifold, the odd Chern character form of the family of connections, and the $\xi$-invariants of the initial and final operators. Our proof is based on a reduction to the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem for manifolds with boundary, which provides a conceptually very simple approach to the problem. As an application, we give a proof of Llarull's rigidity theorem for scalar curvature of strictly convex hypersurfaces in Euclidean space which works the same in even and odd dimensions.

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Christian Baer, Remo Ziemke. 2025-12-04. Spectral flow and the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04968

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