Spectral flow of Callias operators, odd K-cowaist, and positive scalar curvature

On a complete Riemannian manifold $M$, we study the spectral flow of a family of Callias operators. We derive a codimension zero formula when the dimension of $M$ is odd and a codimension one formula when the dimension of $M$ is even. These can be seen as analogues of Gromov–Lawson’s relative index theorem and classical Callias index theorem, respectively. Secondly, we introduce an intrinsic definition of K-cowaist on odd-dimensional manifolds, making use of the odd Chern character of a smooth map from the manifold to a unitary group. It behaves just like the usual K-cowaist on even-dimensional manifolds. We then apply the notion of odd K-cowaist and the tool of spectral flow to investigate problems related to positive scalar curvature on spin manifolds. In particular, we prove infinite odd K-cowaist to be an obstruction to the existence of PSC metrics. We obtain quantitative scalar curvature estimates on complete non-compact manifolds and scalar-mean curvature estimates on compact manifolds with boundary. They extend several previous results optimally, which unfolds a major advantage of our method via spectral flow and odd K-cowaist.