An index theorem for Wiener--Hopf operators

We study multivariate generalisations of the classical Wiener--Hopf algebra, which is the C$^*$-algebra generated by the Wiener--Hopf operators, given by the convolutions restricted to convex cones. By the work of Muhly and Renault, this C$^*$-algebra is known to be isomorphic to the reduced C$^*$-algebra of a certain restricted action groupoid. In a previous paper, we have determined a composition series of this C$^*$-algebra, and compute the $K$-theory homomorphisms induced by the `symbol' maps given by the subquotients of the composition series in terms of the analytical index of a continuous family of Fredholm operators. In this paper, we obtain a topological expression for these index maps in terms of geometric-topological data naturally associated to the underlying convex cone. The resulting index formula is expressed in the framework of Kasparov's bivariant $KK$-theory. Our proof relies heavily on groupoid methods.Comment: 46 pages, 1 figure; last version prior to publication, journal reference adde

A Fixed Parameter Tractable Approximation Scheme for the Optimal Cut Graph of a Surface

Given a graph $G$ cellularly embedded on a surface $\Sigma$ of genus $g$, a cut graph is a subgraph of $G$ such that cutting $\Sigma$ along $G$ yields a topological disk. We provide a fixed parameter tractable approximation scheme for the problem of computing the shortest cut graph, that is, for any $\varepsilon >0$, we show how to compute a $(1+ \varepsilon)$ approximation of the shortest cut graph in time $f(\varepsilon, g)n^3$. Our techniques first rely on the computation of a spanner for the problem using the technique of brick decompositions, to reduce the problem to the case of bounded tree-width. Then, to solve the bounded tree-width case, we introduce a variant of the surface-cut decomposition of Ru\'e, Sau and Thilikos, which may be of independent interest