Adiabatic limits of eta and zeta functions of elliptic operators

Sergiu Moroianu

Published 2002-04-12, updated 2004-07-13Version 2

We extend the calculus of adiabatic pseudo-differential operators to study the adiabatic limit behavior of the eta and zeta functions of a differential operator $\delta$, constructed from an elliptic family of operators indexed by $S^1$. We show that the regularized values ${\eta}(\delta_t,0)$ and $t{\zeta}(\delta_t,0)$ are smooth functions of $t$ at $t=0$, and we identify their values at $t=0$ with the holonomy of the determinant bundle, respectively with a residue trace. For invertible families of operators, the functions ${\eta}(\delta_t,s)$ and $t{\zeta}(\delta_t,s)$ are shown to extend smoothly to $t=0$ for all values of $s$. After normalizing with a Gamma factor, the zeta function satisfies in the adiabatic limit an identity reminiscent of the Riemann zeta function, while the eta function converges to the volume of the Bismut-Freed meromorphic family of connection 1-forms.