A Note on the Einstein-Hilbert action and the Dirac operator on R^n

Abstract

We prove an extension to R^n, endowed with a suitable metric, of the relation between the Einstein-Hilbert action and the Dirac operator which holds on closed spin manifolds. By means of complex powers, we first define the regularised Wodzicki Residue for a class of operators globally defined on R^n. The result is then obtained by using the properties of heat kernels and generalised Laplacians.