Scalar curvature of a Levi-Civita connection on the Cuntz algebra with three generators (Q2011192)

Connections on projective modules and their corresponding curvatures are natural objects in noncommutative geometry. However, classical objects that are built from the curvature tensor, like Ricci and scalar curvature, do not always have straightforward analogues. Over the last few years, this has become an active area of research. Basically, there are two approaches: (1) For a Riemannian manifold, the asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel contains information about the scalar curvature in one of the coefficients. The expansion of the heat kernel makes sense even for a noncommutative manifold, and the very same coefficient serves as a definition of noncommutative scalar curvature. (2) The other procedure is to prove the existence and the uniqueness of a Levi-Civita connection on the respective module of vector fields or one-forms and subsequently compute the curvature operator and scalar curvature. In the paper under review, the author computes the scalar curvature of a Levi-Civita connection on the Cuntz algebra \(\mathcal{O}_3\) with three generators using the second approach: As a first step, a Dirac-type operator is associated with the natural action of the rotation group in three dimensions on \(\mathcal{O}_3\), which in turn yields a differential calculus on \(\mathcal{O}_3\). Second, it is shown that the differential calculus admits a unique Levi-Civita connection in the sense of Bhowmick et al. [\textit{J. Bhowmick, D. Goswami} and \textit{S. Joardar}, ``A new look at Levi-Civita connection in noncommutative geometry'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1606.08142}]. Finally, the Ricci curvature and the scalar curvature are computed along the lines of Bhowmick et al. [loc. cit.].