The Index Bundle for a Family of Dirac-Ramond Operators

Abstract

We study the index bundle of the Dirac-Ramond operator associated with a family $\pi: Z \to X$ of compact spin manifolds. We view this operator as the formal twisted Dirac operator $\dd \otimes \bigotimes_{n=1}^{\infty}S_{q^n}TM_{\C}$ so that its index bundle is an element of $K(X)[[q]]$. When $p_1 (Z) = 0$, we derive some explicit formulas for the Chern character of this index bundle using its modular properties. We also use the modularity to identify our index bundle with an $L(E_8)$ bundle in a special case.