$l^1$-higher index, $l^1$-higher rho invariant and cyclic cohomology

Abstract: 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.