Higher Spectral Flow for Dirac Operators with Local Boundary Conditions

Abstract: We consider a gauge invariant one parameter family of families of fiberwise twisted Dirac type operators on a fiberation with the typical fiber an even dimensional compact manifold with boundary, i.e., a family ${D_u}, u\in [0,1]$ with $D_1=gD_0g^{-1}$ for a suitable unitary automorphism $g$ of the twisted bundle. Suppose all the operators $D_u$ are imposed with a certain \emph{local elliptic} boundary condition $F$ and $D_{u,F}$ is the self-adjoint extension of $D_u$. We establish a formula for the higher spectral flow of ${D_{u,F}}$, $u\in[0,1]$. Our result generalizes a recent result of Gorokhovsky and Lesch to the families case.