A metric approach to limit operators

Abstract

We extend the limit operator machinery of Rabinovich, Roch, and Silbermann from $\mathbb{Z}^N$ to (bounded geometry, strongly) discrete metric spaces. We do not assume the presence of any group structure or action on our metric spaces. Using this machinery and recent ideas of Lindner and Seidel, we show that if a metric space X has Yu's property A, then a band-dominated operator on X is Fredholm if and only if all of its limit operators are invertible. We also show that this always fails for metric spaces without property A.