THE BEHAVIOR OF THE ANALYTIC INDEX UNDER NONTRIVIAL EMBEDDING

The Atiyah-Singer index formula states that the analytic index of an elliptic pseudo-differential operator equals the topological index of the K-theoretic class of its asymptotic symbol. In the embedding proof of the index formula, it is shown that both indices obey certain axioms and which guarantee that they are the same. For the most part, the verification that the topological index obeys the axioms is fairly direct, once one has the relevant background in K-theory. However, the verification is not as straightforward for the analytic index. This is particularly true for the multiplication axiom which is used to show how the index behaves under embedding. Complications arise when the normal bundle of the embedding is nontrivial. Our aim is to clarify the verification of the multiplication axiom for the analytic index by defining the participating elliptic pseudo-differential operators in terms of global symbols invariantly defined on the cotangent bundles of the relevant base spaces.