The Ricci Curvature for Noncommutative Three Tori

Abstract

We compute the Ricci curvature of a curved noncommutative three torus. The computation is done both for conformal and non-conformal perturbations of the flat metric. To perturb the flat metric, the standard volume form on the noncommutative three torus is perturbed and the corresponding perturbed Laplacian is analyzed. Using Connes' pseudodifferential calculus for the noncommutative tori, we explicitly compute the second term of the short time heat kernel expansion for the perturbed Laplacians on functions and on 1-forms. The Ricci curvature is defined by localizing heat traces suitably. Equivalerntly, it can be defined through special values of localized spectral zeta functions. We also compute the scalar curvatures and compare our results with previous calculations in the conformal case. Finally we compute the classical limit of our formulas and show that they coincide with classical formulas in the commutative case.