Noncommutative geometry

Noncommutative geometry (NCG) is a branch of bras, or sheaf-like noncommutative algebraic or operator-

mathematics concerned with a geometric approach to
noncommutative algebras, and with the construction of
spaces that are locally presented by noncommutative al-
gebras of functions (possibly in some generalized sense).
A noncommutative algebra is an associative algebra in
which the multiplication is not commutative, that is, for
which xy does not always equal yx ; or more generally an
algebraic structure in which one of the principal binary
operations is not commutative; one also allows additional
structures, e.g. topology or norm, to be possibly carried
by the noncommutative algebra of functions.
algebraic structures, and geometric entities of certain
kinds, and give an interaction between the algebraic and
geometric description of those via this duality.
Regarding that the commutative rings correspond to
usual affine schemes, and commutative C*-algebras to
usual topological spaces, the extension to noncommuta-
tive rings and algebras requires non-trivial generalization
of topological spaces as “non-commutative spaces”. For
this reason some talk about non-commutative topology,
though the term also has other meanings.

1.1 Applications in mathematical physics

1 Motivation
Some applications in particle physics are described
in the entries Noncommutative standard model and
The main motivation is to extend the commutative dual- Noncommutative quantum field theory. The sudden rise
ity between spaces and functions to the noncommutative in interest in noncommutative geometry in physics fol-
setting. In mathematics, spaces, which are geometric in lows after the speculations of its role in M-theory made
nature, can be related to numerical functions on them. in 1997.[1]
In general, such functions will form a commutative ring.
For instance, one may take the ring C(X) of continuous
complex-valued functions on a topological space X. In 1.2 Motivation from ergodic theory
many cases (e.g., if X is a compact Hausdorff space), we
can recover X from C(X), and therefore it makes some
Some of the theory developed by Alain Connes to handle
sense to say that X has commutative topology.
noncommutative geometry at a technical level has roots
More specifically, in topology, compact Hausdorff topo- in older attempts, in particular in ergodic theory. The
logical spaces can be reconstructed from the Banach proposal of George Mackey to create a virtual subgroup
algebra of functions on the space (Gel'fand-Neimark). theory, with respect to which ergodic group actions would
In commutative algebraic geometry, algebraic schemes become homogeneous spaces of an extended kind, has by
are locally prime spectra of commutative unital rings now been subsumed.
(A. Grothendieck), and schemes can be reconstructed
from the categories of quasicoherent sheaves of modules
on them (P. Gabriel-A. Rosenberg). For Grothendieck
topologies, the cohomological properties of a site are in-
2 Noncommutative C*-algebras,
variant of the corresponding category of sheaves of sets von Neumann algebras
viewed abstractly as a topos (A. Grothendieck). In all
these cases, a space is reconstructed from the algebra of (The formal duals of) non-commutative C*-algebras are
functions or its categorified version—some category of often now called non-commutative spaces. This is by
sheaves on that space. analogy with the Gelfand representation, which shows
Functions on a topological space can be multiplied and that commutative C*-algebras are dual to locally com-
added pointwise hence they form a commutative algebra; pact Hausdorff spaces. In general, one can associate to
in fact these operations are local in the topology of the any C*-algebra S a topological space Ŝ; see spectrum of
base space, hence the functions form a sheaf of commu- a C*-algebra.
tative rings over the base space. For the duality between σ-finite measure spaces and com-
The dream of noncommutative geometry is to gener- mutative von Neumann algebras, noncommutative von
alize this duality to the duality between noncommu- Neumann algebras are called non-commutative measure
tative algebras, or sheaves of noncommutative alge- spaces.

1
2 6 EXAMPLES OF NONCOMMUTATIVE SPACES

3 Noncommutative differentiable morphisms of schemes and covers in terms of categories

of quasicoherent sheaves and flat localization functors.[5]
manifolds There is also another interesting approach via localiza-
tion theory, due to Fred Van Oystaeyen, Luc Willaert and
A smooth Riemannian manifold M is a topological space Alain Verschoren, where the main concept is that of a
with a lot of extra structure. From its algebra of continu- schematic algebra.[6]
ous functions C(M) we only recover M topologically. The
algebraic invariant that recovers the Riemannian struc-
ture is a spectral triple. It is constructed from a smooth
vector bundle E over M, e.g. the exterior algebra bun-
5 Invariants for noncommutative
2
dle. The Hilbert space L (M,E) of square integrable sec- spaces
tions of E carries a representation of C(M) by multiplica-
tion operators, and we consider an unbounded operator Some of the motivating questions of the theory are con-
D in L2 (M,E) with compact resolvent (e.g. the signature cerned with extending known topological invariants to
operator), such that the commutators [D,f] are bounded formal duals of noncommutative (operator) algebras and
whenever f is smooth. A recent deep theorem[2] states other replacements and candidates for noncommutative
that M as a Riemannian manifold can be recovered from spaces. One of the main starting points of the Alain
this data. Connes' direction in noncommutative geometry is his dis-
This suggests that one might define a noncommutative covery of a new homology theory associated to noncom-
Riemannian manifold as a spectral triple (A,H,D), con- mutative associative algebras and noncommutative opera-
sisting of a representation of a C*-algebra A on a Hilbert tor algebras, namely the cyclic homology and its relations
space H, together with an unbounded operator D on H, to the algebraic K-theory (primarily via Connes-Chern
with compact resolvent, such that [D,a] is bounded for character map).
all a in some dense subalgebra of A. Research in spectral The theory of characteristic classes of smooth manifolds
triples is very active, and many examples of noncommu- has been extended to spectral triples, employing the tools
tative manifolds have been constructed. of operator K-theory and cyclic cohomology. Several
generalizations of now classical index theorems allow for
effective extraction of numerical invariants from spec-
4 Noncommutative affine and pro- tral triples. The fundamental characteristic class in cyclic
cohomology, the JLO cocycle, generalizes the classical
jective schemes Chern character.

In analogy to the duality between affine schemes and

commutative rings, we define a category of noncommu-
tative affine schemes as the dual of the category of asso-
ciative unital rings. There are certain analogues of Zariski
topology in that context so that one can glue such affine
schemes to more general objects.
There are also generalizations of the Cone and of the
Proj of a commutative graded ring, mimicking a Serre’s
theorem on Proj. Namely the category of quasicoherent
sheaves of O-modules on a Proj of a commutative graded
algebra is equivalent to the category of graded modules
over the ring localized on Serre’s subcategory of graded
modules of finite length; there is also analogous theorem
for coherent sheaves when the algebra is Noetherian. This
theorem is extended as a definition of noncommutative
projective geometry by Michael Artin and J. J. Zhang,[3]
who add also some general ring-theoretic conditions (e.g.
Artin-Schelter regularity).
Many properties of projective schemes extend to this con-
text. For example, there exist an analog of the celebrated
Serre duality for noncommutative projective schemes of
Artin and Zhang.[4]
6 Examples of noncommutative
spaces
• In the phase space formulation of quantum mechan-
ics, the symplectic phase space of classical mechan-
ics is deformed into a non-commutative phase space
generated by the position and momentum operators.
• The standard model of particle physics is an-
other example of a noncommutative geometry, cf
noncommutative standard model.
• The noncommutative torus, deformation of the
function algebra of the ordinary torus, can be given
the structure of a spectral triple. This class of exam-
ples has been studied intensively and still functions
as a test case for more complicated situations.
• Snyder space[7]
• Noncommutative algebras arising from foliations.

A. L. Rosenberg has created a rather general relative con- • Examples related to dynamical systems arising from
cept of noncommutative quasicompact scheme (over number theory, such as the Gauss shift on continued
a base category), abstracting the Grothendieck’s study of fractions, give rise to noncommutative algebras that

appear to have interesting noncommutative geome-
tries.
7 See also
• Commutativity
• Phase space formulation
• Moyal product
• Fuzzy sphere
• Noncommutative algebraic geometry
• Noncommutative topology
8 Notes
[1] Alain Connes, Michael R. Douglas, Albert Schwarz, Non-
commutative geometry and matrix theory: compactifica-
tion on tori. J. High Energy Phys. 1998, no. 2, Paper 3,
35 pp. doi, hep-th/9711162
[2] Connes, Alain, On the spectral characterization of mani-
folds, arXiv:0810.2088v1
[3] M. Artin, J. J. Zhang, Noncommutative projective
schemes, Adv. Math. 109 (1994), no. 2, 228-−287, doi
[4] Amnon Yekutieli, James J. Zhang, Serre duality for non-
commutative projective schemes, Proc. Amer. Math.
Soc. 125, n. 3, 1997, 697-707, pdf
[5] A. L. Rosenberg, Noncommutative schemes, Com-
positio Mathematica 112 (1998) 93-−125, doi; Un-
derlying spaces of noncommutative schemes, preprint
MPIM2003-111, dvi, ps; MSRI lecture Noncommutative
schemes and spaces (Feb 2000): video
[6] Freddy van Oystaeyen, Algebraic geometry for associa-
tive algebras, ISBN 0-8247-0424-X - New York: Dekker,
2000.- 287 p. - (Monographs and textbooks in pure and
applied mathematics , 232); F. van Oystaeyen, L. Willaert,
Grothendieck topology, coherent sheaves and Serre’s the-
orem for schematic algebras, J. Pure Appl. Alg. 104
(1995), p. 109-−122
[7] H. S. Snyder, Quantized Space-Time, Phys. Rev. 71
(1947) 38
9 References
• Connes, Alain (1994), Non-commutative geometry
(PDF), Boston, MA: Academic Press, ISBN 978-
0-12-185860-5
• Connes, Alain; Marcolli, Matilde (2008), “A walk in
the noncommutative garden”, An invitation to non-
commutative geometry, World Sci. Publ., Hacken-
sack, NJ, pp. 1–128, Bibcode:2006math......1054C,
MR 2408150, arXiv:math/0601054
3
• Connes, Alain; Marcolli, Matilde (2008),
Noncommutative geometry, quantum fields and
motives (PDF), American Mathematical Soci-
ety Colloquium Publications, 55, Providence,
R.I.: American Mathematical Society, ISBN
978-0-8218-4210-2, MR 2371808
• Gracia-Bondia, Jose M; Figueroa, Hector; Varilly,
Joseph C (2000), Elements of Non-commutative ge-
ometry, Birkhauser, ISBN 978-0-8176-4124-5
• Landi, Giovanni (1997), An introduction to
noncommutative spaces and their geometries,
Lecture Notes in Physics. New Series m: Mono-
graphs, 51, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag,
Bibcode:1997hep.th....1078L, ISBN 978-3-540-
63509-3, MR 1482228, arXiv:hep-th/9701078
• Van Oystaeyen, Fred; Verschoren, Alain (1981),
Non-commutative algebraic geometry, Lecture Notes
in Mathematics, 887, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-
540-11153-5
10 Further reading
• Consani, Caterina; Connes, Alain, eds. (2011),
Noncommutative geometry, arithmetic, and related
topics. Proceedings of the 21st meeting of the Japan-
U.S. Mathematics Institute (JAMI) held at Johns Hop-
kins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, March 23–
26, 2009, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, ISBN 1-4214-0352-8, Zbl 1245.00040
• Grensing, Gerhard (2013). Structural aspects of
quantum field theory and noncommutative geometry.
Hackensack New Jersey: World Scientific. ISBN
978-981-4472-69-2.
11 External links
• Introduction to Quantum Geometry by Micho
Đurđevich
• Lectures on Noncommutative Geometry by Victor
Ginzburg
• Very Basic Noncommutative Geometry by Masoud
Khalkhali
• Lectures on Arithmetic Noncommutative Geometry
by Matilde Marcolli
• Noncommutative Geometry for Pedestrians by J.
Madore
• An informal introduction to the ideas and concepts
of noncommutative geometry by Thierry Masson
(an easier introduction that is still rather technical)
4 11 EXTERNAL LINKS

• Noncommutative geometry on arxiv.org

• MathOverflow, Theories of Noncommutative Ge-

ometry

• S. Mahanta, On some approaches to-

wards non-commutative algebraic geometry,
math.QA/0501166
• G. Sardanashvily, Lectures on Differential Geometry
of Modules and Rings (Lambert Academic Publish-
ing, Saarbrücken, 2012); arXiv: 0910.1515

• Noncommutative geometry and particle physics

 5

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