An Invariant Action for Noncommutative Gravity in Four-Dimensions

Two main problems face the construction of noncommutative actions for gravity with star products: the complex metric and finding an invariant measure. The only gauge groups that could be used with star products are the unitary groups. I propose an invariant gravitational action in D=4 dimensions based on the constrained gauge group U(2,2) broken to $U(1,1)\times U(1,1).$ No metric is used, thus giving a naturally invariant measure. This action is generalized to the noncommutative case by replacing ordinary products with star products. The four dimensional noncommutative action is studied and the deformed action to first order in deformation parameter is computed.Comment: 11 pages. Paper shortened. Consideration is now limited to gravity in four-dimension

The Spectral Action for Dirac Operators with skew-symmetric Torsion

We derive a formula for the gravitational part of the spectral action for Dirac operators on 4-dimensional manifolds with totally anti-symmetric torsion. We find that the torsion becomes dynamical and couples to the traceless part of the Riemann curvature tensor. Finally we deduce the Lagrangian for the Standard Model of particle physics in presence of torsion from the Chamseddine-Connes Dirac operator.Comment: Longer introduction and conclusion adde

Massive Hermitian Gravity

Einstein-Strauss Hermitian gravity was recently formulated as a gauge theory where the tangent group is taken to be the pseudo-unitary group instead of the orthogonal group. A Higgs mechanism for massive gravity was also formulated. We generalize this construction to obtain massive Hermitian gravity with the use of a complex Higgs multiplet. We show that both the graviton and antisymmetric tensor acquire the same mass. At the linearized level, the theory is ghost free around Minkowski background and describes a massive graviton with five degrees of freedom and an antisymmetric field with three degrees of of freedom. We determine the strong coupling scales for these degrees of freedom and argue that the potential nonlinear ghosts, if they exist, have to decouple from the gravitational degrees of freedom in strong coupling regime.Comment: 10 page

Gravity with de Sitter and Unitary Tangent Groups

Einstein Gravity can be formulated as a gauge theory with the tangent space respecting the Lorentz symmetry. In this paper we show that the dimension of the tangent space can be larger than the dimension of the manifold and by requiring the invariance of the theory with respect to 5d Lorentz group (de Sitter group) Einstein theory is reproduced unambiguously. The other possibility is to have unitary symmetry on a complex tangent space of the same dimension as the manifold. In this case the resultant theory is Einstein-Strauss Hermitian gravity. The tangent group is important for matter couplings. We show that in the de Sitter case the 4 dimensional space time vector and scalar are naturally unified by a hidden symmetry being components of a 5d vector in the tangent space. With a de Sitter tangent group spinors can exist only when they are made complex or taken in doublets in a way similar to N=2 supersymmetry.Comment: 23 pages, one reference added.To be published in JHE

SL(2,C) Gravity with Complex Vierbein and Its Noncommutative Extension

We show that it is possible to formulate gravity with a complex vierbein based on SL(2,C) gauge invariance. The proposed action is a four-form where the metric is not introduced but results as a function of the complex vierbein. This formulation is based on the first order formalism. The novel feature here is that integration of the spin-connection gauge field gives rise to kinetic terms for a massless graviton, a massive graviton with the Fierz-Pauli mass term, and a scalar field. The resulting theory is equivalent to bigravity. We then show that by extending the gauge group to GL(2,C} the formalism can be easily generalized to apply to a noncommutative space with the star product. We give the deformed action and derive the Seiberg-Witten map for the complex vierbein and gauge fields.Comment: Minor corrections. The noncommutative action in section 3 is simplified. Version to appear in Physical Review

Metrics Admitting Killing Spinors In Five Dimensions

BPS black hole configurations which break half of supersymmetry in the theory of N=2, d=5 supergravity coupled to an arbitrary number of abelian vector multiplets are discussed. A general class of solutions comprising all known BPS rotating black hole solutions is obtained.Comment: 15 pages, Late

SO(10) unification in noncommutative geometry revisited

We investigate the SO(10)-unification model in a Lie algebraic formulation of noncommutative geometry. The SO(10)-symmetry is broken by a 45-Higgs and the Majorana mass term for the right neutrinos (126-Higgs) to the standard model structure group. We study the case that the fermion masses are as general as possible, which leads to two 10-multiplets, four 120-multiplets and two additional 126-multiplets of Higgs fields. This Higgs structure differs considerably from the two Higgs multiplets 16 \otimes 16^* and 16^c \otimes 16^* used by Chamseddine and Fr\"ohlich. We find the usual tree-level predictions of noncommutative geometry m_W=(1/2)m_t, \sin^2\theta_W=(3/8) and g_2=g_3 as well as m_H \leq m_t.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX 2e. v2: typos corrected and footnote on Super-Kamiokande results adde