This monograph addresses two significant related questions in complex geometry: the construction of a Chern character on the Grothendieck group of coherent sheaves of a compact complex manifold with values in its Bott-Chern cohomology, and the proof of a corresponding Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck theorem. One main tool used is the equivalence of categories established by Block between the derived category of bounded complexes with coherent cohomology and the homotopy category of antiholomorphic superconnections. Chern-Weil theoretic techniques are then used to construct forms that represent the Chern character. The main theorem is then established using methods of analysis, by combining local index theory with the hypoelliptic Laplacian.

Jean-Michel Bismut is a French mathematician who is a professor in the Mathematics Department in Orsay. He is known for his contributions to index theory, geometric analysis and probability theory. Together with Gilles Lebeau, he has developed the theory of the hypoelliptic Laplacian, to which he found applications in various fields of mathematics. He shared the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2021 with Jeff Cheeger.