Supersymmetric quantum theory and non-commutative geometry (Q1297680)

The paper under review is a generalization to noncommutative geometry of the authors' paper [ibid. 193, No. 3, 527--594 (1998; Zbl 0910.53047)] where a formulation of classical differential geometry, containing Riemannian geometry, symplectic geometry and Kähler geometry etc., is described in terms of the supersymmetric spectral data with certain global gauge symmetry groups in the following way. Classical geometry is formulated in terms of spectral triples \((\mathcal{A},\mathcal{H}, D)\) and the complete geometrical information about a smooth manifold \(M\) is extracted from the spectral data, where \(\mathcal{A}\) is a commutative algebra of smooth functions on \(M\), \(\mathcal{H}\) is a Hilbert space of spinors over \(M\) and \(D\) is a self-adjoint Dirac operator on \(\mathcal{H}\). The definition of spectral triples involves a Clifford action which can be used to define two Dirac-Kähler operators \(\mathcal{D}\) and \(\overline{\mathcal{D}}\) for the bundle of differential forms. The algebraic relations between these operators are precisely those of the two supercharges of \(N=(1,1)\) supersymmetric quantum mechanics : \(\{ \mathcal{D},\overline{\mathcal{D}} \}=0\) and \(\mathcal{D}^2=\overline{\mathcal{D}}^2\). \smallskip {}From the \(N=(1,1)\) supersymmetric spectral data \((\mathcal{A},\mathcal{H},\mathcal{D},\overline{\mathcal{D}})\), one can reconstruct the de Rham-Hodge theory and the Riemannian geometry of smooth (compact) Riemannian manifolds. Moreover, additional geometrical structures, e.g.\ a symplectic or complex structure, appear in the form of global gauge symmetries commuting with the elements of \(\mathcal{A}\) but acting non-trivially on \(\mathcal{D}\) and \(\overline{\mathcal{D}}\):\ A global gauge symmetry group containing U(1)\( \times \)U(1) generates four Dirac-Kähler operators -- the ``supercharges'' of \(N=(2,2)\) supersymmetry -- from \(\mathcal{D}\) and \(\overline{\mathcal{D}}\) and identifies the underlying manifold \(M\) as a Kähler manifold. A global gauge symmetry group containing \(\text{SU}(2) \times\text{SU}(2)\) leads to eight supercharges generating an \(N=(4,4)\) supersymmetry algebra and is characteristic of hyper-Kähler geometry. Complex-Hermitian and symplectic geometry are encoded in \(N=(2,2)\) supersymmetric spectral data with partially broken supersymmetry. In this paper under review, these results are generalized from classical to noncommutative geometry by the prescription to replace the commutative algebra of functions \(C^{\infty}(M)\) over a classical manifold by a noncommutative \({}^*\)-algebra \(\mathcal{A}\) satisfying certain properties. In Section 2, a review is given on Connes' formulation of non-commutative geometry using a single generalized Dirac operator, and then spectral data with supersymmetry algebras is introduced and noncommutative generalizations are given for Riemannian, complex, Kähler and hyper-Kähler, as well as for symplectic geometry. As examples, the non-commutative 3-sphere and the noncommutative torus are discussed. In section 5, a list is given for open problems arising naturally from the discussion of this paper. In particular, a briefly comment is made on other, string theory motivated applications of noncommutative geometry.