Essentially normal Hilbert modules and K-homology

This paper mainly concerns the essential normality of graded submodules. Essentially all of the basic Hilbert modules that have received attention over the years are p-essentially normal—including the d-shift Hilbert module, the Hardy and Bergman modules of the unit ball. Arveson conjectured graded submodules over the unit ball inherit this property and provided motivations to seek an affirmative answer. Some positive results have been obtained by Arveson and Douglas. However, the problem has been resistant. In dimensions d = 2, 3, this paper shows that the Arveson’s conjecture is true. In any dimension, the paper also gives an affirmative answer in the case of the graded principal submodule. Finally, the paper is associated with K-homology invariants arising from graded quotient modules, by which geometry of the quotient modules and geometry of algebraic varieties are connected. In dimensions d = 2, 3, it is shown that K-homology invariants determined by graded quotients are nontrivial. The paper also establishes results on p-smoothness of K-homology elements, and gives an explicit expression for K-homology invariant in dimension d = 2.