The term a_4 in the heat kernel expansion of noncommutative tori

We consider the Laplacian associated with a general metric in the canonical conformal structure of the noncommutative two torus, and calculate a local expression for the term a4 that appears in its corresponding small-time heat kernel expansion. The final formula involves one variable functions and lengthy two, three and four variable functions of the modular automorphism of the state that encodes the conformal perturbation of the flat metric. We confirm the validity of the calculated expressions by showing that they satisfy a family of conceptually predicted functional relations. By studying these functional relations abstractly, we derive a partial differential system which involves a natural action of cyclic groups of order 2, 3 and 4 and a flow in parameter space. We discover symmetries of the calculated expressions with respect to the action of the cyclic groups. In passing, we show that the main ingredients of our calculations, which come from a rearrangement lemma and relations between the derivatives up to order 4 of the conformal factor and those of its logarithm, can be derived by finite differences from the generating function of the Bernoulli numbers and its multiplicative inverse. We then shed light on the significance of exponential polynomials and their smooth fractions in understanding the general structure of the noncommutative geometric invariants appearing in the heat kernel expansion. As an application of our results we obtain the a4 term for noncommutative four tori which split as products of two tori. These four tori are not conformally flat and the a4 term gives a first hint of the Riemann curvature and the higher-dimensional modular structure

Curvature in Noncommutative Geometry

Our understanding of the notion of curvature in a noncommutative setting has progressed substantially in the past ten years. This new episode in noncommutative geometry started when a Gauss-Bonnet theorem was proved by Connes and Tretkoff for a curved noncommutative two torus. Ideas from spectral geometry and heat kernel asymptotic expansions suggest a general way of defining local curvature invariants for noncommutative Riemannian type spaces where the metric structure is encoded by a Dirac type operator. To carry explicit computations however one needs quite intriguing new ideas. We give an account of the most recent developments on the notion of curvature in noncommutative geometry in this paper.Comment: 76 pages, 8 figures, final version, one section on open problems added, and references expanded. Appears in "Advances in Noncommutative Geometry - on the occasion of Alain Connes' 70th birthday

Motives and periods in Bianchi IX gravity models

In this paper we show that the heat coefficients of the Dirac-Laplacian of SU(2)-invariant Bianchi IX metrics are periods of motives of complements in affine spaces of unions of quadrics and hyperplanes

Spectral action for Bianchi type-IX cosmological models

In this paper we prove a rationality phenomena for the coefficients of the heat kernel expansion of the Dirac-Laplacian of Bianchi IX cosmological models. Due the complexities arising from the anisotropic nature of the model, we present a novel method of writing the heat coefficients as Wodzicki resiudes of certain Laplacians and then provide an elegant proof of the rationality result. That is, we show that each coefficient is described by a several variable polynomial with rational coefficients of the cosmic expansion factors and their higher derivatives of a certain order. This result confirms the arithmetic nature of the complicated terms in the expansion