On the Uniqueness of the $G$-equivariant Spectral Flow

Abstract: The spectral flow is an integer-valued homotopy invariant for paths of selfadjoint Fredholm operators. Lesch as well as Pejsachowicz, Fitzpatrick and Ciriza independently showed that it is uniquely characterised by its elementary properties. The authors recently introduced a $G$-equivariant spectral flow for paths of selfadjoint Fredholm operators that are equivariant under the action of a compact Lie group $G$. The purpose of this paper is to show that the $G$-equivariant spectral flow is uniquely characterised by the same elementary properties when appropriately restated. As an application we introduce an alternative definition of the $G$-equivariant spectral flow via a $G$-equivariant Maslov index.