Anomaly inflow for local boundary conditions

Abstract

We study the $\eta$-invariant of a Dirac operator on a manifold with boundary subject to local boundary conditions with the help of heat kernel methods. In even dimensions, we relate this invariant to $\eta$-invariants of a boundary Dirac operator, while in odd dimension, it is expressed through the index of boundary operators. We stress the necessity of the strong ellipticity condition for the applicability of our methods. We show that the Witten--Yonekura boundary conditions are not strongly elliptic, though they are very close to strongly elliptic ones.