arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jonathan Rosenberg.
We describe Novikov's "higher signature conjecture," which dates back to the late 1960's, as well as many alternative formulations and related problems. The Novikov Conjecture is perhaps the most important unsolved problem in high-dimensional manifold topology, but more importantly, variants and analogues permeate many other areas of mathematics, from geometry to operator algebras to representation theory
For a long time, practitioners of the art of operator algebras always worked over the complex numbers, and nobody paid much attention to real C*-algebras. Over the last thirty years, that situation has changed, and it's become apparent that real C*-algebras have a lot of extra structure not evident from their complexifications. At the same time, interest in real C*-algebras has been driven by a number of compelling applications, for example in the classification of manifolds of positive scalar curvature, in representation theory, and in the study of orientifold string theories. We will discuss a number of interesting examples of these, and how the real Baum-Connes conjecture plays an important role.
We show how to define Riemannian metrics and connections on a noncommutative torus in such a way that an analogue of Levi-Civita's theorem on the existence and uniqueness of a Riemannian connection holds. The major novelty is that we need to use two different notions of noncommutative vector field. Levi-Civita's theorem makes it possible to define Riemannian curvature using the usual formulas.
We show that the real Baum-Connes conjecture for abelian groups, possibly twisted by a cocycle, explains the isomorphisms of (twisted) KR-groups that underlie all T-dualities of torus orientifold string theories.
We analyze the brane content and charges in all of the orientifold string theories on space-times of the form E x R^8, where E is an elliptic curve with holomorphic or anti-holomorphic involution. Many of these theories involve "twistings" coming from the B-field and/or sign choices on the orientifold planes. A description of these theories from the point of view of algebraic geometry, using the Legendre normal form, naturally divides them into three groupings. The physical theories within each grouping are related to one another via sequences of T-dualities. Our approach agrees with both previous topological calculations of twisted KR-theory and known physics arguments, and explains how the twistings originate from both a mathematical and a physical perspective.
D-brane charges in orientifold string theories are classified by the KR-theory of Atiyah. However, this is assuming that all O-planes have the same sign. When there are O-planes of different signs, physics demands a "KR-theory with a sign choice" which up until now has not been studied by mathematicians (with the unique exception of Moutuou, who didn't have a specific application in mind). We give a definition of this theory and compute it for orientifold theories compactified on a circle and 2-torus. We also explain how and why additional "twisting" is implemented. We show that our results satisfy all possible T-duality relationships for orientifold string theories on elliptic curves, which will be studied further in subsequent work.
Recently Baraglia showed how topological T-duality can be extended to apply not only to principal circle bundles, but also to non-principal circle bundles. We show that his results can also be recovered via two other methods: the homotopy-theoretic approach of Bunke and Schick, and the noncommutative geometry approach which we previously used for principal torus bundles. This work has several interesting byproducts, including a study of the K-theory of crossed products by Isom(R), the universal cover of O(2), and some interesting facts about equivariant K-theory for Z/2. In the final section of this paper, these results are extended to the case of bundles with singular fibers, or in other words, non-free O(2)-actions.
We give two derivations of magnetic flux quantization in a superconducting ring in the shape of a Möbius band, one using direct study of the Schrödinger equation and the other using the holonomy of flat U(1)-gauge bundles. Both methods show that the magnetic flux must be quantized in integral or half-integral multiples of $Φ_0=hc/(2e)$. Half-integral quantization shows up in "nodal states" whose wavefunction vanishes along the center of the ring, for which there is now some experimental evidence.
The Künneth Theorem for equivariant (complex) K-theory K^*_G, in the form developed by Hodgkin and others, fails dramatically when G is a finite group, and even when G is cyclic of order 2. We remedy this situation in this very simplest case G = Z/2 by using the power of RO(G)-graded equivariant K-theory.
We discuss K-theoretic matching of D-brane charges in the string duality between type I on the 4-torus and type IIA on a K3 surface. This case is more complex than the familiar case of IIA/IIB duality, which is already well understood, but it turns out that replacing K3 by its orbifold blow-down seems largely to resolve the apparent problems with the theory. In particular, this allows for precise matching of 2-torsion brane charges.
It is now known (or in some cases just believed) that many quantum field theories exhibit dualities, equivalences with the same or a different theory in which things appear very different, but the overall physical implications are the same. We will discuss some of these dualities from the point of view of a mathematician, focusing on "charge conservation" and the role played by K-theory and noncommutative geometry. Some of the work described here is joint with Mathai Varghese and Stefan Mendez-Diez; the last section is new.
We begin to study a sigma-model in which both the space-time manifold and the two-dimensional string world-sheet are made noncommutative. The most precise results apply to the case where both the space-time manifold and the two-dimensional string world-sheet are replaced by noncommutative tori. In this situation, we are able to determine when maps between such noncommutative tori exist, to derive the Euler-Lagrange equations, to classify many of the critical points of the Lagrangian, and to study the associated partition function.
As a first step at developing a theory of noncommutative nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations, we analyze noncommutative analogues of Laplace's equation and its variants (some of the them nonlinear) over noncommutative tori. Along the way we prove noncommutative analogues of many results in classical analysis, such as Wiener's Theorem on functions with absolutely convergent Fourier series, and standard existence and non-existence theorems on elliptic functions. We show that many many classical methods, including the Maximum Principle, the direct method of the calculus of variations, the use of the Leray-Schauder Theorem, etc., have analogues in the noncommutative setting.
We describe a categorical framework for the classification of D-branes on noncommutative spaces using techniques from bivariant K-theory of C*-algebras. We present a new description of bivariant K-theory in terms of noncommutative correspondences which is nicely adapted to the study of T-duality in open string theory. We systematically use the diagram calculus for bivariant K-theory as detailed in our previous paper. We explicitly work out our theory for a number of examples of noncommutative manifolds.
We develop some of the ingredients needed for string theory on noncommutative spacetimes, proposing an axiomatic formulation of T-duality as well as establishing a very general formula for D-brane charges. This formula is closely related to a noncommutative Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch theorem that is proved here. Our approach relies on a very general form of Poincare duality, which is studied here in detail. Among the technical tools employed are calculations with iterated products in bivariant K-theory and cyclic theory, which are simplified using a novel diagram calculus reminiscent of Feynman diagrams.
We introduce an analogue of the Novikov Conjecture on higher signatures in the context of the algebraic geometry of (nonsingular) complex projective varieties. This conjecture asserts that certain "higher Todd genera" are birational invariants. This implies birational invariance of certain extra combinations of Chern classes (beyond just the classical Todd genus) in the case of varieties with large fundamental group (in the topological sense). We prove the conjecture under the assumption of the "strong Novikov Conjecture" for the fundamental group, which is known to be correct for many groups of geometric interest. We also show that, in a certain sense, our conjecture is best possible.
We use noncommutative topology to study T-duality for principal torus bundles with H-flux. We characterize precisely when there is a "classical" T-dual, i.e., a dual bundle with dual H-flux, and when the T-dual must be "non-classical," that is, a continuous field of noncommutative tori. The duality comes with an isomorphism of twisted $K$-theories, required for matching of D-brane charges, just as in the classical case. The isomorphism of twisted cohomology which one gets in the classical case is replaced in the non-classical case by an isomorphism of twisted cyclic homology. An important part of the paper contains a detailed analysis of the classifying space for topological T-duality, as well as the T-duality group and its action. The issue of possible non-uniqueness of T-duals can be studied via the action of the T-duality group.
A general formula for the topology and H-flux of the T-duals of type II string theories with H-flux on toroidal compactifications is presented here. It is known that toroidal compactifications with H-flux do not necessarily have T-duals which are themselves toroidal compactifications. A big puzzle has been to explain these mysterious ``missing T-duals'', and our paper presents a solution to this problem using noncommutative topology. We also analyze the T-duality group and its action, and illustrate these concepts with examples.