Functional calculus and joint torsion of pairs of almost commuting operators

Abstract

This paper investigates the transformation of determinants of pairs of Fredholm operators with trace class commutators. We study the extent to which the functional calculus commutes, modulo operator ideals, with projections in a finitely summable Fredholm module. As an application, we recover in particular some results of R. Carey and J. Pincus on determinants and Tate tame symbols. Additionally, we obtain variational formulas for joint torsion.