Scalar curvature for noncommutative four-tori (Q2354789)

The aim of the paper under review is to study the curved geometry of noncommutative 4-tori. This is done in various steps. In fact, after some general discussion about higher-dimensional tori and their flat geometry in Section 2, the authors explain at the beginning of Section 3 how to consider the noncommutative 4-torus \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\) as a noncommutative abelian variety equipped with a complex structure. A Weyl conformal factor is then used to perturb the standard volume form, and it is shown that the corresponding perturbed Laplacian encodes local geometric information. To be a bit more precise, the authors use Connes' pseudodifferential calculus [\textit{A. Connes}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. A 290, 599--604 (1980; Zbl 0433.46057)] to apply heat kernel techniques (cf. [\textit{A. Connes} and \textit{P. Tretkoff}, in: Noncommutative geometry, arithmetic, and related topics. Proceedings of the 21st meeting of the Japan-U.S. Mathematics Institute (JAMI) held at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, March 23--26, 2009. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 141--158 (2011; Zbl 1251.46037)] and [\textit{P. B. Gilkey}, Invariance theory, the heat equation, and the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. Mathematics Lecture Series, 11. Wilmington, Delaware: Publish or Perish, Inc. (1984; Zbl 0565.58035)]) to the perturbed Laplacian in order to explicitly compute the terms in the small time heat kernel expansion which correspond to geometric invariants of \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\) such as the volume and the scalar curvature. In Section 4, an analogue of Weyl's law, which states that one can hear the volume of a closed Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) from the asymptotic distribution of the eigenvalues of its canonical Laplacian acting on smooth functions on \(M\), is established for \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\) by studying the asymptotic distribution of the eigenvalues of the perturbed Laplacian. Moreover, an analogue of \textit{A. Connes}' trace theorem [Commun. Math. Phys. 117, No. 4, 673--683 (1988; Zbl 0658.53068)], which is a generalization of Weyl's law stating that the Dixmier trace and Wodzicki's noncommutative residue coincide on pseudodifferential operators of order \(-n\) acting on the sections of a vector bundle over \(M\), is provided for \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\). This is done by introducing a noncommutative residue on the algebra of classical pseudodifferential operators on \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\) and showing that it coincides with the Dixmier trace on the pseudodifferential operators of order \(-4\). In Section 5, the authors perform the computation of the scalar curvature for \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\), and provide explicit formulas for the local functions that describe the curvature in terms of the modular automorphism of the conformally perturbed volume form and derivatives of the logarithm of the Weyl factor. Then, by integrating this curvature, an explicit formula for the analogue of the Einstein-Hilbert action for \(\mathbb{T}^4_{\theta}\) is given. Finally, it is shown that the extremum of this action occurs at metrics with constant scalar curvature (see [\textit{T. P. Branson} and \textit{B. Örsted}, Compos. Math. 60, 261--293 (1986; Zbl 0608.58039)] for the corresponding commutative statement).