We propose a new notion of unbounded
-cycle,
mildly generalizing unbounded Kasparov modules, for which the direct sum is well-defined.
To a pair
of
-unital
-algebras, we can then
associate a semigroup
of homotopy equivalence classes of unbounded cycles, and we
prove that this semigroup is in fact an abelian group. In case
is separable, our
group
is isomorphic
to Kasparov’s
-theory
group
via the bounded transform. We also discuss various notions of degenerate cycles, and
we prove that the homotopy relation on unbounded cycles coincides with
the relation generated by operator-homotopies and addition of degenerate
cycles.