Fedele Lizzi

Cosmological perturbations and short distance physics from Noncommutative Geometry

We investigate the possible effects on the evolution of perturbations in the inflationary epoch due to short distance physics. We introduce a suitable non local action for the inflaton field, suggested by Noncommutative Geometry, and obtained by adopting a generalized star product on a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background. In particular, we study how the presence of a length scale where spacetime becomes noncommutative affects the gaussianity and isotropy properties of fluctuations, and the corresponding effects on the Cosmic Microwave Background spectrum.

Fermion Hilbert space and fermion doubling in the noncommutative geometry approach to gauge theories

In this paper we study the structure of the Hilbert space for the recent noncommutative geometry models of gauge theories. We point out the presence of unphysical degrees of freedom similar to the ones appearing in lattice gauge theories (fermion doubling). We investigate the possibility of projecting out these states at the various levels in the construction, but we find that the results of these attempts are either physically unacceptable or geometrically unappealing. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}

Twisting all the way: from Classical Mechanics to Quantum Fields

We discuss the effects that a noncommutative geometry induced by a Drinfeld twist has on physical theories. We systematically deform all products and symmetries of the theory. We discuss noncommutative classical mechanics, in particular its deformed Poisson bracket and hence time evolution and symmetries. The twisting is then extended to classical fields, and then to the main interest of this work: quantum fields. This leads to a geometric formulation of quantization on noncommutative space-time, i.e., we establish a noncommutative correspondence principle from *-Poisson brackets to * commutators. In particular commutation relations among creation and annihilation operators are deduced.

The Fuzzy Disc

We introduce a finite dimensional matrix model approximation to the algebra of functions on a disc based on noncommutative geometry. The algebra is a subalgebra of the one characterizing the noncommutative plane with a * product and depends on two parameters N and θ. It is composed of functions which decay exponentially outside a disc. In the limit in which the size of the matrices goes to infinity and the noncommutativity parameter goes to zero the disc becomes sharper. We introduce a laplacian defined on the whole algebra and calculate its eigenvalues. We also calculate the two-points correlation function for a free massless theory (Greens function). In both cases the agreement with the exact result on the disc is very good already for relatively small matrices. This opens up the possibility for the study of field theories on the disc with nonperturbative methods. The model contains edge states, a fact studied in a similar matrix model independently introduced by Balachandran, Gupta and Kurkcuoglu.

STRING GEOMETRY AND THE NONCOMMUTATIVE TORUS

Abstract:We construct a new gauge theory on a pair of d-dimensional noncommutative tori. The latter comes from an intimate relationship between the noncommutative geometry associated with a lattice vertex operator algebra ? and the noncommutative torus. We show that the tachyon algebra of ? is naturally isomorphic to a class of twisted modules representing quantum deformations of the algebra of functions on the torus. We construct the corresponding real spectral triples and determine their Morita equivalence classes using string duality arguments. These constructions yield simple proofs of the O(d,d;ℤ) Morita equivalences between d-dimensional noncommutative tori and give a natural physical interpretation of them in terms of the target space duality group of toroidally compactified string theory. We classify the automorphisms of the twisted modules and construct the most general gauge theory which is invariant under the automorphism group. We compute bosonic and fermionic actions associated with these gauge theories and show that they are explicitly duality-symmetric. The duality-invariant gauge theory is manifestly covariant but contains highly non-local interactions. We show that it also admits a new sort of particle-antiparticle duality which enables the construction of instanton field configurations in any dimension. The duality non-symmetric on-shell projection of the field theory is shown to coincide with the standard non-abelian Yang–Mills gauge theory minimally coupled to massive Dirac fermion fields.

Twisted noncommutative field theory with the Wick-Voros and Moyal products

We present a comparison of the noncommutative field theories built using two different star products: Moyal and Wick-Voros (or normally ordered). For the latter we discuss both the classical and the quantum field theory in the quartic potential case and c

Geometry of the gauge algebra in noncommutative Yang-Mills Theory

A detailed description of the infinite-dimensional Lie algebra of -gauge transformations in non-commutative Yang-Mills theory is presented. Various descriptions of this algebra are given in terms of inner automorphisms of the underlying deformed algebra of functions on spacetime, of deformed symplectic diffeomorphisms, of the infinite unitary Lie algebra u(∞), and of the C-algebra of compact operators on a quantum mechanical Hilbert space. The spacetime and string interpretations are also elucidated.

Grand Symmetry, Spectral Action, and the Higgs mass

A bstractIn the context of the spectral action and the noncommutative geometry approach to the standard model, we build a model based on a larger symmetry. With this grand symmetry it is natural to have the scalar field necessary to obtain the Higgs mass in the vicinity of 126 GeV. This larger symmetry mixes gauge and spin degrees of freedom without introducing extra fermions. Requiring the noncommutative space to be an almost commutative geometry (i.e. the product of manifold by a finite dimensional internal space) gives conditions for the breaking of this grand symmetry to the standard model.

GENERALIZED WEYL SYSTEMS AND κ-MINKOWSKI SPACE

We introduce the notion of generalized Weyl system, and use it to define *-products which generalize the commutation relations of Lie algebras. In particular we study in a comparative way various *-products which generalize the κ-Minkowski commutation relation.

From Large N Matrices to the Noncommutative Torus

Abstract: We describe how and to what extent the noncommutative two-torus can be approximated by a tower of finite-dimensional matrix geometries. The approximation is carried out for both irrational and rational deformation parameters by embedding the C*-algebra of the noncommutative torus into an approximately finite algebra. The construction is a rigorous derivation of the recent discretizations of noncommutative gauge theories using finite dimensional matrix models, and it shows precisely how the continuum limits of these models must be taken. We clarify various aspects of Morita equivalence using this formalism and describe some applications to noncommutative Yang–Mills theory.