arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Zhizhang Xie.
The relative Novikov conjecture states that the relative higher signatures of manifolds with boundary are invariant under orientation-preserving homotopy equivalences of pairs. In this paper, we study the relative Baum-Connes assembly map for any pair of groups and apply it to solve the relative Novikov conjecture when the groups satisfy certain geometric conditions.
In this paper, we prove Gromov's flat corner domination conjecture in all dimensions. As a consequence, we answer positively the Stoker conjecture for convex Euclidean polyhedra in all dimensions. By applying the same techniques, we also prove a rigidity theorem for strictly convex domains in Euclidean spaces.
In this paper, we develop a new index theory for manifolds with polyhedral boundary. As an application, we prove Gromov's dihedral extremality conjecture regarding comparisons of scalar curvatures, mean curvatures and dihedral angles between two compact manifolds with polyhedral boundary in all dimensions. We also prove Gromov's dihedral rigidity conjecture for a class of positively curved manifolds with polyhedral boundary in all dimensions.
In this paper, we give both positive and negative answers to Gromov's compactness question regarding positive scalar curvature metrics on noncompact manifolds. First we construct examples that give a negative answer to Gromov's compactness question. These examples are based on the non-vanishing of certain index theoretic invariants that arise at the infinity of the given underlying manifold. This is a $ \sideset{}{^1}\varprojlim$ phenomenon and naturally leads one to conjecture that Gromov's compactness question has a positive answer provided that these $ \sideset{}{^1}\varprojlim$ invariants also vanish. We prove this is indeed the case for a class of $1$-tame manifolds.
We develop two connections between the quantitative framework of operator $K$-theory for geometric $C^*$-algebras and the problem of positive scalar curvature. First, we introduce a quantitative notion of higher index and use it to give a refinement of the well-known obstruction of Rosenberg to positive scalar curvature on closed spin manifolds coming from the higher index of the Dirac operator. We show that on a manifold with uniformly positive scalar curvature, the propagation at which the index of the Dirac operator vanishes is related inversely to the curvature lower bound. Second, we give an approach, using related techniques, to Gromov's band width conjecture, which has been the subject of recent work by Zeidler and Cecchini from a different point of view.
In this paper, we prove a rigidity theorem for smooth strictly convex domains in Euclidean spaces.
In this paper, we study $l^1$-higher index theory and its pairing with cyclic cohomology for both closed manifolds and compact manifolds with boundary. We first give a sufficient geometric condition for the vanishing of the $l^1$-higher indices of Dirac-type operators on closed manifolds. This leads us to define an $l^1$-version of higher rho invariants. We prove a product formula for these $l^1$-higher rho invariants. A main novelty of our product formula is that it works in the general Banach algebra setting, in particular, the $l^1$-setting. On compact spin manifolds with boundary, we also give a sufficient geometric condition for Dirac operators to have well-defined $l^1$-higher indices. More precisely, we show that, on a compact spin manifold $M$ with boundary equipped with a Riemannian metric which has product structure near the boundary, if the scalar curvature on the boundary is sufficiently large, then the $l^1$-higher index of its Dirac operator $D_M$ is well-defined and lies in the $K$-theory of the $l^1$-algebra of the fundamental group. As an immediate corollary, we see that if the Bost conjecture holds for the fundamental group of $M$, then the $C^\ast$-algebraic higher index of $D_M$ lies in the image of the Baum-Connes assembly map. By pairing the above $K$-theoretic $l^1$-index results with cyclic cocycles, we prove an $l^1$-version of the higher Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem for manifolds with boundary. A key ingredient of its proof is the product formula for $l^1$-higher rho invariants mentioned above.
Let $M$ be a closed spin manifold which supports a positive scalar curvature metric. The set of concordance classes of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ forms an abelian group $P(M)$ after fixing a positive scalar curvature metric. The group $P(M)$ measures the size of the space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$. Weinberger and Yu gave a lower bound of the rank of $P(M)$ in terms of the number of torsion elements of $π_1(M)$. In this paper, we give a sharper lower bound of the rank of $P(M)$ by studying the image of the relative higher index map from $P(M)$ to the real K-theory of the group $\mathrm{C}^\ast$-algebra $\mathrm{C}^\ast_{\mathrm{r}}(π_1(M))$. We show that it rationally contains the image of the Baum-Connes assembly map up to a certain homological degree depending on the dimension of $M$. At the same time we obtain lower bounds for the positive scalar curvature bordism group by applying the higher rho-invariant.
In this paper, we prove a quantitative relative index theorem. It provides a conceptual framework for studying some conjectures and open questions of Gromov on positive scalar curvature. More precisely, we prove a $λ$-Lipschitz rigidity theorem for (possibly incomplete) Riemannian metrics on spheres with certain types of subsets removed. This $λ$-Lipschitz rigidity theorem is asymptotically optimal. As a consequence, we obtain an asymptotically optimal $λ$-Lipschitz rigidity theorem for positive scalar curvature metrics on hemispheres. These give positive answers to the corresponding open questions raised by Gromov. As another application, we prove Gromov's $\square^{n-m}$ inequality on the bound of distances between opposite faces of spin manifolds with cube-like boundaries with a suboptimal constant. As immediate consequences, this implies Gromov's cube inequality on the bound of widths of Riemannian cubes and Gromov's conjecture on the bound of widths of Riemannian bands with suboptimal constants. Further geometric applications will be discussed in a forthcoming paper.
For a given self-adjoint first order elliptic differential operator on a closed smooth manifold, we prove a list of results on when the delocalized eta invariant associated to a regular covering space can be approximated by the delocalized eta invariants associated to finite-sheeted covering spaces. One of our main results is the following. Suppose $M$ is a closed smooth spin manifold and $\widetilde M$ is a $Γ$-regular covering space of $M$. Let $\langle α\rangle$ be the conjugacy class of a non-identity element $α\in Γ$. Suppose $\{Γ_i\}$ is a sequence of finite-index normal subgroups of $Γ$ that distinguishes $\langle α\rangle$. Let $π_{Γ_i}$ be the quotient map from $Γ$ to $Γ/Γ_i$ and $\langle π_{Γ_i}(α) \rangle$ the conjugacy class of $π_{Γ_i}(α)$ in $Γ/Γ_i$. If the scalar curvature on $M$ is everywhere bounded below by a sufficiently large positive number, then the delocalized eta invariant for the Dirac operator of $\widetilde M$ at the conjugacy class $\langle α\rangle$ is equal to the limit of the delocalized eta invariants for the Dirac operators of $M_{Γ_i}$ at the conjugacy class $\langle π_{Γ_i}(α) \rangle$, where $M_{Γ_i}= \widetilde M/Γ_i$ is the finite-sheeted covering space of $M$ determined by $Γ_i$. In another main result of the paper, we prove that the limit of the delocalized eta invariants for the Dirac operators of $M_{Γ_i}$ at the conjugacy class $\langle π_{Γ_i}(α) \rangle$ converges, under the assumption that the rational maximal Baum-Connes conjecture holds for $Γ$.
Gromov proved a quadratic decay inequality of scalar curvature for a class of complete manifolds. In this paper, we prove that for any uniformly contractible manifold with finite asymptotic dimension, its scalar curvature decays to zero at a rate depending only on the contractibility radius of the manifold and the diameter control of the asymptotic dimension. We construct examples of uniformly contractible manifolds with finite asymptotic dimension whose scalar curvature functions decay arbitrarily slowly. This shows that our result is the best possible. We prove our result by studying the index pairing between Dirac operators and compactly supported vector bundles with Lipschitz control. A key technical ingredient for the proof of our main result is a Lipschitz control for the topological $K$-theory of finite dimensional simplicial complexes.
We show that if a countable discrete group acts properly and isometrically on a spin manifold of bounded Riemannian geometry and uniformly positive scalar curvature, then, under a suitable condition on the group action, the maximal higher index of the Dirac operator vanishes in K-theory of the maximal equivariant Roe algebra. The group action is not assumed to be cocompact. A key step in the proof is to establish a functional calculus for the Dirac operator in the maximal equivariant uniform Roe algebra. This allows us to prove vanishing of the index of the Dirac operator in K-theory of this algebra, which in turn yields the result for the maximal higher index.
Let $N$ be a closed spin manifold with positive scalar curvature and $D_N$ the Dirac operator on $N$. Let $M_1$ and $M_2$ be two Galois covers of $N$ such that $M_2$ is a quotient of $M_1$. Then the quotient map from $M_1$ to $M_2$ naturally induces maps between the geometric $C^*$-algebras associated to the two manifolds. We prove, by a finite-propagation argument, that the \emph{maximal} higher rho invariants of the lifts of $D_N$ to $M_1$ and $M_2$ behave functorially with respect to the above quotient map. This can be applied to the computation of higher rho invariants, along with other related invariants.
Let $X$ be a closed oriented connected topological manifold of dimension $n\geq 5$. The structure group of $X$ is the abelian group of equivalence classes of all pairs $(f, M)$ such that $M$ is a closed oriented manifold and $f\colon M \to X$ is an orientation-preserving homotopy equivalence. The main purpose of this article is to prove that a higher rho invariant defines a group homomorphism from the topological structure group of $X$ to the $C^*$-algebraic structure group of $X$. In fact, we introduce a higher rho invariant map on the homology manifold structure group of a closed oriented connected $\textit{topological}$ manifold, and prove its additivity. This higher rho invariant map restricts to the higher rho invariant map on the topological structure group. More generally, the same techniques developed in this paper can be applied to define a higher rho invariant map on the homology manifold structure group of a closed oriented connected $\textit{homology}$ manifold. As an application, we use the additivity of the higher rho invariant map to study non-rigidity of topological manifolds. More precisely, we give a lower bound for the free rank of the $\textit{algebraically reduced}$ structure group of $X$ by the number of torsion elements in $π_1 X$. Here the algebraic reduced structure group of $X$ is the quotient of the topological structure group of $X$ modulo a certain action of self-homotopy equivalences of $X$. We also introduce a notion of homological higher rho invariant, which can be used to detect many elements in the structure group of a closed oriented topological manifold, even when the fundamental group of the manifold is torsion free. In particular, we apply this homological higher rho invariant to show that the structure group is not finitely generated for a class of manifolds.
The first main result of this paper is to prove that the convergence of Lott's delocalized eta invariant holds for all differential operators with a sufficiently large spectral gap at zero. Furthermore, to each delocalized cyclic cocycle, we define a higher analogue of Lott's delocalized eta invariant and prove its convergence when the delocalized cyclic cocycle has at most exponential growth. Our second main result is to obtain an explicit formula of the delocalized Connes-Chern character of all $C^\ast$-algebraic secondary invariants for word hyperbolic groups. Equivalently, we give an explicit formula for the pairing between $C^\ast$-algebraic secondary invariants and delocalized cyclic cocycles of the group algebra. When the $C^\ast$-algebraic secondary invariant is a $K$-theoretic higher rho invariant of an invertible differential operator, we show this pairing is precisely the higher analogue of Lott's delocalized eta invariant alluded to above. Our work uses Puschnigg's smooth dense subalgebra for word hyperbolic groups in an essential way. We emphasize that our construction of the delocalized Connes-Chern character is at $C^\ast$-algebra $K$-theory level. This is of essential importance for applications to geometry and topology. As a consequence, we compute the paring between delocalized cyclic cocycles and $C^\ast$-algebraic Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index classes for manifolds with boundary, when the fundamental group of the given manifold is hyperbolic.
We give a survey on higher invariants in noncommutative geometry and their applications to differential geometry and topology.
In this paper, we establish a precise connection between higher rho invariants and delocalized eta invariants. Given an element in a discrete group, if its conjugacy class has polynomial growth, then there is a natural trace map on the $K_0$-group of its group $C^\ast$-algebra. For each such trace map, we construct a determinant map on secondary higher invariants. We show that, under the evaluation of this determinant map, the image of a higher rho invariant is precisely the corresponding delocalized eta invariant of Lott. As a consequence, we show that if the Baum-Connes conjecture holds for a group, then Lott's delocalized eta invariants take values in algebraic numbers. We also generalize Lott's delocalized eta invariant to the case where the corresponding conjugacy class does not have polynomial growth, provided that the strong Novikov conjecture holds for the group.
We revisit the construction of signature classes in C*-algebra K-theory, and develop a variation that allows us to prove equality of signature classes in some situations involving homotopy equivalences of noncompact manifolds that are only defined outside of a compact set. As an application, we prove a counterpart for signature classes of a codimension two vanishing theorem for the index of the Dirac operator on spin manifolds (the latter is due to Hanke, Pape and Schick, and is a development of well-known work of Gromov and Lawson).