Cut-and-Paste on Foliated Bundles

Abstract

We discuss the behaviour of the signature index class of closed foliated bundles under the operation of cutting and pasting. Along the way we establish several index theoretic results: we define Atiyah-Patodi-Singer (APS) index classes for Dirac-type operators on foliated bundles with boundary; we prove a relative index theorem for the difference of two APS-index classes associated to different boundary conditions; we prove a gluing formula on closed foliated bundles that are the union of two foliated bundles with boundary; we establish a variational formula for APS-index classes of a 1-parameter family of Dirac-type operators on foliated bundles (this formula involves the noncommutative spectral flow of the boundary family). All these formulas take place in the $K$-theory of a suitable cross-product algebra. We then apply these results in order to find sufficient conditions ensuring the equality of the signature index classes of two cut-and-paste equivalent foliated bundles. We give applications to the question of when the Baum-Connes higher signatures of closed foliated bundles are cut-and-paste invariant.