On the Singularities of the Zeta and Eta functions of an Elliptic Operator

Abstract

Let P be a selfadjoint elliptic operator of order m>0 acting on the sections of a Hermitian vector bundle over a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension n. General arguments show that its zeta and eta functions may have poles only at points of the form s=k/m, where k ranges over all non-zero integers less than or equal to n. In this paper, we construct elementary and explicit examples of perturbations of P which make the zeta and eta functions be singular at all the points at which they are allowed to have singularities. We proceed within three classes of operators: Dirac-type operators, selfadjoint first-order differential operators, and selfadjoint elliptic pseudodifferential operators. As a result, we obtain genericity results for the singularities of the zeta and eta functions in those settings. In particular, in the setting of Dirac-type operators we obtain a new proof of a well known result of Branson-Gilkey, which was obtained by means of Riemannian invariant theory. As it turns out, the results of this paper contradict Theorem 6.3 of the third author's paper [Po1]. Corrections to that statement are given in Appendix B.