The Spectrum of the Dirac Operator on Coset Spaces with Homogeneous Gauge Fields

Abstract

The spectrum and degeneracies of the Dirac operator are analysed on compact coset spaces when there is a non-zero homogeneous background gauge field which is compatible with the symmetries of the space, in particular when the gauge field is derived from the spin-connection. It is shown how the degeneracy of the lowest Landau level in the recently proposed higher dimensional quantum Hall effect is related to the Atiyah-Singer index theorem for the Dirac operator on a compact coset space.