Proper asymptotic unitary equivalence in KK-theory and projection lifting from the corona algebra

In this paper we generalize the notion of essential codimension of Brown, Douglas, and Fillmore using KK-theory and prove a result which asserts that there is a unitary of the form ‘identity + compact’ which gives the unitary equivalence of two projections if the ‘essential codimension’ of two projections vanishes for certain C ∗-algebras employing the proper asymptotic unitary equivalence of KK-theory found by M. Dadarlat and S. Eilers. We also apply our result to study the projections in the corona algebra of C(X)⊗B where X is [0, 1], (−∞,∞), [0,∞), and [0, 1]/{0, 1}. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.