On gravity, torsion and the spectral action principle (Q665486)

On compact Riemannian spin manifolds without boundary and equipped with orthogonal connections, the authors investigate the induced Dirac operators and the associated commutative spectral triples. For the case of four dimensions and totally anti-symmetric torsion, they compute the Chamseddine-Connes spectral action, derive the equations of motions, and discuss critical points. Contents include: Introduction; Orthogonal connections on Riemannian manifolds; Curvature calculations in case of totally anti-symmetric torsion in four dimensions; Dirac operators associated to orthogonal connections; Commutative geometries and the spectral action principle; Appendix; and References (thirty-two items).