Pierre Martinetti

The spectral distance in the moyal plane

Abstract We study the noncommutative geometry of the Moyal plane from a metric point of view. Starting from a non-compact spectral triple based on the Moyal deformation A of the algebra of Schwartz functions on R 2 , we explicitly compute Connes’ spectral distance between the pure states of A corresponding to eigenfunctions of the quantum harmonic oscillator. For other pure states, we provide a lower bound to the spectral distance, and show that the latest is not always finite. As a consequence, we show that the spectral triple (Gayral etxa0al. (2004)xa0 [17] ) is not a spectral metric space in the sense of Bellissard etxa0al. (2010)xa0 [19] . This motivates the study of truncations of the spectral triple, based on M n ( C ) with arbitrary n ∈ N , which turn out to be compact quantum metric spaces in the sense of Rieffel. Finally the distance is explicitly computed for n = 2 .

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.

Minimal length in quantum space and integrations of the line element in Noncommutative Geometry

We question the emergence of a minimal length in quantum spacetime, comparing two notions that appeared at various points in the literature: on the one side, the quantum length as the spectrum of an operator L in the Doplicher Fredenhagen Roberts (DFR) quantum spacetime, as well as in the canonical noncommutative spacetime (θ-Minkowski); on the other side, Connes spectral distance in noncommutative geometry. Although in the Euclidean space the two notions merge into the one of geodesic distance, they yield distinct results in the noncommutative framework. In particular, in the Moyal plane, the quantum length is bounded above from zero while the spectral distance can take any real positive value, including infinity. We show how to solve this discrepancy by doubling the spectral triple. This leads us to introduce a modified quantum length d′L, which coincides exactly with the spectral distance dD on the set of states of optimal localization. On the set of eigenstates of the quantum harmonic oscillator — to...

A View on Optimal Transport from Noncommutative Geometry

We discuss the relation between the Wasserstein distance of order 1 between probability distributions on a metric space, arising in the study of Monge-Kantorovich transport problem, and the spectral distance of noncommutative geometry. Starting from a remark of Rieffel on compact manifolds, we first show that on any - i.e. non-necessary compact - complete Riemannian spin manifolds, the two distances coincide. Then, on convex manifolds in the sense of Nash embedding, we provide some natural upper and lower bounds to the distance between any two probability distributions. Specializing to the Euclidean space R-n, we explicitly compute the distance for a particular class of distributions generalizing Gaussian wave packet. Finally we explore the analogy between the spectral and the Wasserstein distances in the noncommutative case, focusing on the standard model and the Moyal plane. In particular we point out that in the two-sheet space of the standard model, an optimal-transport interpretation of the metric requires a cost function that does not vanish on the diagonal. The latest is similar to the cost function occurring in the relativistic heat equation.

A no-pure-boost uncertainty principle from spacetime noncommutativity

Abstract We study boost and space-rotation transformations in κ-Minkowski noncommutative spacetime, using the techniques that some of us had previously developed [A. Agostini, G. Amelino-Camelia, M. Arzano, A. Marciano, R.A. Tacchi, hep-th/0607221 ] for a description of translations in κ-Minkowski, which in particular led to the introduction of translation transformation parameters that do not commute with the spacetime coordinates. We find a similar description of boosts and space rotations, which allows us to identify some associated conserved charges, but the form of the commutators between transformation parameters and spacetime coordinates is incompatible with the possibility of a pure boost.

Noether analysis of the twisted Hopf symmetries of canonical noncommutative spacetimes

We study the twisted-Hopf-algebra symmetries of observer-independent canonical spacetime noncommutativity, for which the commutators of the spacetime coordinates take the form [x̂, x̂ ] = iθ with observer-independent (and coordinate-independent) θ . We find that it is necessary to introduce nontrivial commutators between transformation parameters and spacetime coordinates, and that the form of these commutators implies that all symmetry transformations must include a translation component. We show that with our noncommutative transformation parameters the Noether analysis of the symmetries is straightforward, and we compare our canonical-noncommutativity results with the structure of the conserved charges and the “no-pure-boost” requirement derived in a previous study of κ-Minkowski noncommutativity. We also verify that, while at intermediate stages of the analysis we do find terms that depend on the ordering convention adopted in setting up the Weyl map, the final result for the conserved charges is reassuringly independent of the choice of Weyl map and (the corresponding choice of) star product. ∗Supported by EU Marie Curie fellowship EIF-025947-QGNC

Higgs mass in Noncommutative Geometry

In the noncommutative geometry approach to the standard model, an extra scalar field - initially suggested by particle physicist to stabilize the electroweak vacuum - makes the computation of the Higgs mass compatible with the 126 GeV experimental value. We give a brief account on how to generate this field from the Majorana mass of the neutrino, following the principles of noncommutative geometry. Talk given by P.M. at Corfou Workshop on noncommutative field theory and gravity, september 2013

GEOMETRIC MODULAR ACTION FOR DISJOINT INTERVALS AND BOUNDARY CONFORMAL FIELD THEORY

In suitable states, the modular group of local algebras associated with unions of disjoint intervals in chiral conformal quantum field theory acts geometrically. We translate this result into the setting of boundary conformal QFT and interpret it as a relation between temperature and acceleration. We also discuss novel aspects (mixing and charge splitting) of geometric modular action for unions of disjoint intervals in the vacuum state.

Spectral distance on the circle

A building block of non-commutative geometry is the observation that most of the geometric information of a compact Riemannian spin manifold M is encoded within its Dirac operator D. Especially via Connes distance formula one is able to extract from the spectral properties of D the geodesic distance on M. In this paper we investigate the distance d encoded within a covariant Dirac operator on a trivial U(n)-fiber bundle over the circle with arbitrary connection. It turns out that the connected components of d are tori whose dimension is given by the holonomy of the connection. For n=2 we explicitly compute d on all the connected components. For n⩾2 we restrict to a given fiber and find that the distance is given by the trace of the module of a matrix. The latest is defined by the holonomy and the coordinate of the points under consideration. This paper extends to arbitrary n and arbitrary connection the results obtained in a previous work for U(2)-bundle with constant connection. It confirms interesting properties of the spectral distance with respect to another distance naturally associated to connection, namely the horizontal or Carnot–Caratheodory distance dH. Especially in case the connection has irrational components, the connected components for d are the closure of the connected components of dH within the Euclidean topology on the torus.

Twisted spectral triple for the Standard Model and spontaneous breaking of the Grand Symmetry

Grand symmetry models in noncommutative geometry, characterized by a non-trivial action of functions on spinors, have been introduced to generate minimally (i.e. without adding new fermions) and in agreement with the first order condition an extra scalar field beyond the standard model, which both stabilizes the electroweak vacuum and makes the computation of the mass of the Higgs compatible with its experimental value. In this paper, we use a twist in the sense of Connes-Moscovici to cure a technical problem due to the non-trivial action on spinors, that is the appearance together with the extra scalar field of unbounded vectorial terms. The twist makes these terms bounded and - thanks to a twisted version of the first-order condition that we introduce here - also permits to understand the breaking to the standard model as a dynamical process induced by the spectral action, as conjectured in [24]. This is a spontaneous breaking from a pre-geometric Pati-Salam model to the almost-commutativegeometryofthestandardmodel,withtwoHiggs-likefields: scalar and vector.