Milnor meets Hopf and Toeplitz at the K-theory of quantum projective planes
Authors
Francesco D'Andrea
Piotr M. Hajac
Tomasz Maszczyk
Bartosz Zieliński
Abstract
We explore applications of the celebrated construction of the Milnor connecting homomorphism from the odd to the even K-groups in the context of Hopf--Galois theory. For a finitely generated projective module associated to any piecewise cleft principal comodule algebra, we provide an explicit formula computing the clutching $K_1$-class in terms of the representation matrix defining the module. Thus, the module is determined by an explicit Milnor idempotent. We apply this new tool to the K-theory of quantum complex projective planes to determine their $K_0$-generators in terms of modules associated to noncommutative Hopf fibrations. On the other hand, using explicit homotopy between unitaries, we express the $K_0$-class of the Milnor idempotents in terms of elementary projections in the Toeplitz C*-algebra. This allows us to infer that all our generators are in the positive cone of the $K_0$-group, which is a purely quantum phenomenon absent in the classical case.
