Anomaly Cancellation and gauge group of the standard model in NCG

Abstract

It is well known that anomaly cancellation {\it almost} determines the hypercharges in the standard model. A related (and somewhat more stronger) phenomenon takes place in Connes' NCG framework: unimodularity (a technical condition on elements of the algebra) is {\it strictly} equivalent to anomaly cancellation (in the absence of right-handed neutrinos); and this in turn reduces the symmetry group of the theory to the standard $SU(3)\times SU(2) \times U(1)$.