Gravity, non-commutative geometry and the Wodzicki residue

We derive an action for gravity in the framework of non-commutative geometry by using the Wodzicki residue. We prove that for a Dirac operator D on an n dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with n ≥ 4, n even, the Wodzicki residue Res(D⁻ⁿ⁺²) is the integral of the second coefficient of the heat kernel expansion of D². We use this result to derive a gravity action for commutative geometry which is the usual Einstein-Hilbert action and we also apply our results to a non-commutative extension which is given by the tensor product of the algebra of smooth functions on a manifold and a finite dimensional matrix algebra. In this case we obtain gravity with a cosmological constant.     

A remark about static space times

We discuss a differential equation, whose unknowns are a function and a Riemannian metric. This equation occurs both in general relativity (static space times) and in the study of the space of Riemannian metrics on a manifold (singularities of the map from the space of metrics into the space of functions, which assigns to any metric its scalar curvature).     

On the geometrical representation of the Jacobian in the path integral reduction problem

By using the formula for the scalar curvature of the manifold with the Kaluza-Klein metric we obtain the geometrical representation of the Jacobian resulted from the path integral reduction problem in Wiener path integrals for a scalar particle on a smooth compact Riemannian manifold with the given free isometric action of the compact semisimple Lie group.     

Riemannian structure on manifolds of quantum states

A metric tensor is defined from the underlying Hilbert space structure for any submanifold of quantum states. The case where the manifold is generated by the action of a Lie group on a fixed state vector (generalized coherent states manifold hereafter noted G.C.S.M.) is studied in details; the geometrical properties of some wellknown G.C.S.M. are reviewed and an explicit expression for the scalar Riemannian curvature is given in the general case. The physical meaning of such Riemannian structures (which have been recently introduced to describe collective manifolds in nuclear physics) is discussed. It is shown on examples that the distance between nearby states is related to quantum fluctuations; in the particular case of the harmonic oscillator group the condition of zero curvature appears to be identical to that of non dispersion of wave packets.Equipe de Recherche Associée au C.N.R.S.     

Vector potential and Riemannian space

This paper uncovers the basic reason for the mysterious change of sign from plus to minus in the fourth coordinate of nature's Pythagorean law, usually accepted on empirical grounds, although it destroys the rational basis of a Riemannian geometry. Here we assume a genuine, positive-definite Riemannian space and an action principle which is quadratic in the curvature quantities (and thus scale invariant). The constant σ between the two basic invariants is equated to1/2. Then the matter tensor has the trace zero. In consequence of the constancy of the scalar curvature and the divergence identity of the matter tensor, the perturbation metric has to satisfy a scalar and a vector condition, with a negative sign in the fourth coordinate. These conditions lead to the Lorentz condition and the wave equation for the vector potential. Thus the entire Maxwell-Lorentz type of electrodynamics becomes logically derivable, making no concession to any irrationality.     

Quadratic metric‐affine gravity

We consider spacetime to be a connected real 4‐manifold equipped with a Lorentzian metric and an affine connection. The 10 independent components of the (symmetric) metric tensor and the 64 connection coefficients are the unknowns of our theory. We introduce an action which is (purely) quadratic in curvature and study the resulting system of Euler–Lagrange equations. In the first part of the paper we look for Riemannian solutions, i.e. solutions whose connection is Levi‐Civita. We find two classes of Riemannian solutions: 1) Einstein spaces, and 2) spacetimes with pp‐wave metric of parallel Ricci curvature. We prove that for a generic quadratic action these are the only Riemannian solutions. In the second part of the paper we look for non‐Riemannian solutions. We define the notion of a “Weyl pseudoinstanton” (metric compatible spacetime whose curvature is purely of Weyl type) and prove that a Weyl pseudoinstanton is a solution of our field equations. Using the pseudoinstanton approach we construct explicitly a non‐Riemannian solution which is a wave of torsion in a spacetime with Minkowski metric. We discuss the possibility of using this non‐Riemannian solution as a mathematical model for the neutrino.     

Averaging out the Einstein equations

A general scheme to average out an arbitrary 4-dimensional Riemannian space and to construct the geometry of the averaged space is proposed. It is shown that the averaged manifold has a metric and two equi-affine symmetric connections. The geometry of the space is characterized by the tensors of Riemannian and non-Riemannian curvatures, an affine deformation tensor being the result of non-metricity of one of the connections. To average out the differential Bianchi identities, correlation 2-form, 3-form and 4-form are introduced and the differential relations on these correlations tensors are derived, the relations being integrable on an arbitrary averaged manifold. Upon assuming a splitting rule for the average of the product including a covariantly constant tensor, an averaging out of the Einstein equations has been carried out which brings additional terms with the correlation tensors into them. As shown by averaging out the contracted Bianchi identities, the equations of motion for the averaged energy-momentum tensor do also include the geometric correction terms. Considering the gravitational induction tensor to be the Riemannian curvature tensor (then the non-Riemannian one is the macroscopic gravitational field), a theorem that relates the algebraic structure of the averaged microscopic metric with that of the induction tensor is proved. Due to the theorem the same field operator as in the Einstein equations is manifestly extracted from the averaged ones. Physical interpretation and application of the relations and equations obtained to treat macroscopic gravity are discussed.     

Chiral Asymmetry and the Spectral Action

We consider orthogonal connections with arbitrary torsion on compact Riemannian manifolds. For the induced Dirac operators, twisted Dirac operators and Dirac operators of Chamseddine-Connes type we compute the spectral action. In addition to the Einstein-Hilbert action and the bosonic part of the Standard Model Lagrangian we find the Holst term from Loop Quantum Gravity, a coupling of the Holst term to the scalar curvature and a prediction for the value of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.     

A conformal lower bound for the smallest eigenvalue of the Dirac operator and killing spinors

On a Riemannian spin manifold, we give a lower bound for the square of the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator by the smallest eigenvalue of the conformal Laplacian (the Yamabe operator). We prove, in the limiting case, that the eigenspinor field is a killing spinor, i.e., parallel with respect to a natural connection. In particular, if the scalar curvature is positive, the eigenspinor field is annihilated by harmonic forms and the metric is Einstein.     

Injectivity Radius of Lorentzian Manifolds

Motivated by the application to general relativity we study the geometry and regularity of Lorentzian manifolds under natural curvature and volume bounds, and we establish several injectivity radius estimates at a point or on the past null cone of a point. Our estimates are entirely local and geometric, and are formulated via a reference Riemannian metric that we canonically associate with a given observer (p, T) –where p is a point of the manifold and T is a future-oriented time-like unit vector prescribed at p only. The proofs are based on a generalization of arguments from Riemannian geometry. We first establish estimates on the reference Riemannian metric, and then express them in terms of the Lorentzian metric. In the context of general relativity, our estimate on the injectivity radius of an observer should be useful to investigate the regularity of spacetimes satisfying Einstein field equations.     

On the geometrical representation of the path integral reduction Jacobian: The case of dependent variables in a description of reduced motion

The geometrical representation of the path integral reduction Jacobian obtained in the problem of the path integral quantization of a scalar particle motion on a smooth compact Riemannian manifold with the given free isometric action of the compact semisimple Lie group has been found for the case when the local reduced motion is described by means of dependent coordinates. The result is based on the scalar curvature formula for the original manifold which is viewed as a total space of the principal fiber bundle.     

Open Wilson lines as closed strings in non-commutative field theories

Open Wilson line operators and the generalized star product have been studied extensively in non-commutative gauge theories. We show that they also show up in non-commutative scalar field theories as universal structures. We first point out that the dipole picture of non-commutative geometry provides an intuitive argument for robustness of the open Wilson lines and generalized star products therein. We calculate the one-loop effective action of the non-commutative scalar field theory with cubic self-interaction and show explicitly that the generalized star products arise in the non-planar part. It is shown that, in the low-energy, large non-commutativity limit, the non-planar part is expressible solely in terms of the scalar open Wilson line operator and descendants, the latter being interpreted as composite operators representing a closed string. Received: 11 September 2001 / Revised version: 24 October 2001 / Published online: 14 December 2001     

Scalar curvature and projective compactness

Consider a manifold with boundary, and such that the interior is equipped with a pseudo-Riemannian metric. We prove that, under mild asymptotic non-vanishing conditions on the scalar curvature, if the Levi-Civita connection of the interior does not extend to the boundary (because for example the interior is complete) whereas its projective structure does, then the metric is projectively compact of order 2; this order is a measure of volume growth towards infinity. This implies a host of results including that the metric satisfies asymptotic Einstein conditions, and induces a canonical conformal structure on the boundary. Underpinning this work is a new interpretation of scalar curvature in terms of projective geometry. This enables us to show that if the projective structure of a metric extends to the boundary then its scalar curvature also naturally and smoothly extends.     

Noncommutative geometric spaces with boundary: Spectral action

We study spectral action for Riemannian manifolds with boundary, and then generalize this to noncommutative spaces which are products of a Riemannian manifold times a finite space. We determine the boundary conditions consistent with the hermiticity of the Dirac operator. We then define spectral triples of noncommutative spaces with boundary. In particular we evaluate the spectral action corresponding to the noncommutative space of the standard model and show that the Einstein–Hilbert action gets modified by the addition of the extrinsic curvature terms with the right sign and coefficient necessary for consistency of the Hamiltonian. We also include effects due to the addition of a dilaton field.     

Yang-Mills theory in three dimensions as a quantum gravity theory

We perform the dual transformation of theYang-Mills theory in three dimensions using the Wilson action on the cubic lattice. The dual lattice is made of tetrahedra triangulating a 3-dimensional curved manifold but which is embedded into a flat 6-dimensional space [for the SU(2) gauge group]. In the continuum limit, the theory can be reformulated in terms of 6-component gauge-invariant scalar fields having the meaning of the external coordinates of the dual lattice sites. These 6-component fields induce a metric and a curvature of the 3-dimensional dual-color space. The Yang-Mills theory can also be rewritten as a quantum gravity theory with the Einstein-Hilbert action but with a purely imaginary Newton constant plus a homogeneous “ether” term. The theory can be formulated in a gauge-invariant and local form without explicit color degrees of freedom.     

Cartan–Weyl Dirac and Laplacian Operators,Brownian Motions: The Quantum Potential and Scalar Curvature,Maxwell’s and Dirac-Hestenes Equations,and Supersymmetric Systems

We present the Dirac and Laplacian operators on Clifford bundles over space–time, associated to metric compatible linear connections of Cartan–Weyl, with trace-torsion, Q. In the case of nondegenerate metrics, we obtain a theory of generalized Brownian motions whose drift is the metric conjugate of Q. We give the constitutive equations for Q. We find that it contains Maxwell’s equations, characterized by two potentials, an harmonic one which has a zero field (Bohm-Aharonov potential) and a coexact term that generalizes the Hertz potential of Maxwell’s equations in Minkowski space.We develop the theory of the Hertz potential for a general Riemannian manifold. We study the invariant state for the theory, and determine the decomposition of Q in this state which has an invariant Born measure. In addition to the logarithmic potential derivative term, we have the previous Maxwellian potentials normalized by the invariant density. We characterize the time-evolution irreversibility of the Brownian motions generated by the Cartan–Weyl laplacians, in terms of these normalized Maxwell’s potentials. We prove the equivalence of the sourceless Maxwell equation on Minkowski space, and the Dirac-Hestenes equation for a Dirac-Hestenes spinor field written on Minkowski space provided with a Cartan–Weyl connection. If Q is characterized by the invariant state of the diffusion process generated on Euclidean space, then the Maxwell’s potentials appearing in Q can be seen alternatively as derived from the internal rotational degrees of freedom of the Dirac-Hestenes spinor field, yet the equivalence between Maxwell’s equation and Dirac-Hestenes equations is valid if we have that these potentials have only two components corresponding to the spin-plane. We present Lorentz-invariant diffusion representations for the Cartan–Weyl connections that sustain the equivalence of these equations, and furthermore, the diffusion of differential forms along these Brownian motions. We prove that the construction of the relativistic Brownian motion theory for the flat Minkowski metric, follows from the choices of the degenerate Clifford structure and the Oron and Horwitz relativistic Gaussian, instead of the Euclidean structure and the orthogonal invariant Gaussian. We further indicate the random Poincaré–Cartan invariants of phase-space provided with the canonical symplectic structure. We introduce the energy-form of the exact terms of Q and derive the relativistic quantum potential from the groundstate representation. We derive the field equations corresponding to these exact terms from an average on the invariant state Cartan scalar curvature, and find that the quantum potential can be identified with 1 / 12R(g), where R(g) is the metric scalar curvature. We establish a link between an anisotropic noise tensor and the genesis of a gravitational field in terms of the generalized Brownian motions. Thus, when we have a nontrivial curvature, we can identify the quantum nonlocal correlations with the gravitational field. We discuss the relations of this work with the heat kernel approach in quantum gravity. We finally present for the case of Q restricted to this exact term a supersymmetric system, in the classical sense due to E.Witten, and discuss the possible extensions to include the electromagnetic potential terms of Q     

On the Riemannian description of chaotic instability in Hamiltonian dynamics

In this work we investigate Hamiltonian chaos using elementary Riemannian geometry. This is possible because the trajectories of a standard Hamiltonian system (i.e., having a quadratic kinetic energy term) can be seen as geodesics of the configuration space manifold equipped with the standard Jacobi metric. The stability of the dynamics is tackled with the Jacobi-Levi-Civita equation (JLCE) for geodesic spread and is applied to the case of a two degrees of freedom Hamiltonian. A detailed comparison is made among the qualitative informations given by Poincare sections and the results of the geometric investigation. Complete agreement is found. The solutions of the JLCE are also in quantitative agreement with the solutions of the tangent dynamics equation. The configuration space manifold associated to the Hamiltonian studied here is everywhere of positive curvature. However, curvature is not constant and its fluctuations along the geodesics can yield parametric instability of the trajectories, thus chaos. This mechanism seems to be one of the most effective sources of chaotic instabilities in Hamiltonians of physical interest, and makes a major difference with Anosov flows, and, in general, with abstract geodesic flows of ergodic theory. (c) 1995 American Institute of Physics.     

Geometric Quantization and the Metric Dependence of the Self-Dual Field Theory

We investigate the metric dependence of the partition function of the self-dual p-form gauge field on an arbitrary Riemannian manifold. Using geometric quantization of the space of middle-dimensional forms, we derive a projectively flat connection on its space of polarizations. This connection governs metric dependence of the partition function of the self-dual field. We show that the dependence is essentially given by the Cheeger half-torsion of the underlying manifold. We compute the local gravitational anomaly and show how our derivation relates to the classical computation based on index theory. As an application, we show that the one-loop determinant of the (2, 0) multiplet on a Calabi-Yau threefold coincides with the square root of the one-loop determinant of the B-model.     

An inequality between intrinsic and extrinsic scalar curvature invariants for codimension 2 embeddings

We study the local and isometric embedding of an m-dimensional Lorentzian manifold in an (m+2)-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean space. An inequality is proven between the basic curvature invariants, i.e. the intrinsic scalar curvature and the extrinsic mean and scalar normal curvature. The inequality becomes an equality if the two components of the second fundamental form have a specified form with respect to some orthonormal basis of the manifold. As an application we look at the space–times embedded in a six-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean space for which the equality holds. They turn out to be Petrov type D models filled with an anisotropic perfect fluid and containing a timelike two-surface of constant curvature.     

Inequivalence of Jordan and Einstein Frame: What Is the Low Energy Gravity in String Theory?

It is well-known that any scalar can be promoted to a Jordan-Brans-Dicke type scalar coupling to the Einstein-Hilbert term through a field dependent Weyl transformation of the metric. The Weyl rescaling also transforms mass terms into coupling constants between matter and the scalar. It is pointed out that there exists a distinguished metric where all scalars decouple from an arbitrary fiducial fermion, e.g. the nucleon. If bound states of this fermion are used to define distances and to probe the interior of the forward light cone, it seems reasonable to say that the metric in that particular frame defines the local geometry of space-time at low energies, as probed by experimental gravity and cosmology.