Noncommutative geometry and particle physics (Q2250146)

Noncommutative geometry (NCG) is a field of mathematics which has close ties with physics and gauge theory in particular. It turns out that a spectral triple, the main technical device in NCG, naturally gives rise to a gauge theory. The great potential of noncommutative approach becomes visible in particle physics in specific examples corresponding to familiar gauge theories. The path is through the derivation of the full Standard Model of particle physics. The goal of the book under review is to explore the path mentioned above and to work towards applications in particle physics, notably to the Standard Model of elementary particle. The first three chapters of the book is devoted to finite noncommutative spaces, so to speak finite dimensional spectral triples, because these finite spaces will in fact turn out to be crucial to the physical applications of the later chapters. In chapters four and five one can find spectral triples in full generality together with the first application of spectral triples in a proof of the local index formula of Connes and Moscovici. Chapters six through ten of the book is about the building up of gauge theories from real spectral triples. Gauge invariant quantities are introduced and two possible ways to expand the spectral action are discussed. Chapter nine of the book serves two purposes. First abelian gauge theory is described within the framework of noncommutative geometry. Second it shows how this example can be modified to provide a description of one of the simplest examples of a field theory in physics, namely electrodynamics. It describes how to obtain the Lagrangian of electrodynamics from the spectral action. The last two chapters is a discussion about the application of the results obtained from the previous chapters. The Standard Model gauge group and gauge field together with scalar Higgs field are obtained. Also the phenomenology of the noncommutative Standard Model is discussed. The book talks about a recently proposed model that enlarges the particle content of the Standard Model by a real scalar singlet. It concludes by showing that this noncommutative model is compatible with the experimentally measured mass.