The Ricci curvature for noncommutative three tori (Q2186802)

In order to compute the Ricci curvature of a curved noncommutative three torus, the authors consider both the conformal and the non-conformal perturbations of the flat metric. When the flat metric is perturbed, the standard volume form on the noncommutative three torus is also perturbed and hence, the corresponding perturbed Laplacian needs to be investigated. Using Connes' pseudodifferential calculus for the noncommutative tori, the authors explicitly compute the second term of the short time heat kernel expansion for the perturbed Laplacians on functions and on 1-forms, which is enough to define the Ricci functional for the noncommutative three torus. The Ricci curvature is defined by localizing heat traces suitably. The authors compute the scalar curvature of the noncommutative three torus equipped with a non-conformally flat metric and then they compute the Ricci density for this class of metrics. It is important to point out that two of the functions that appear in the expression for scalar curvature, are the same as functions that previously appear in the scalar curvature of the two dimensional curved noncommutative tori. Finally, the authors prove that the classical limit of the obtained formulas coincide with classical formulas in the commutative case.