Masoud Khalkhali - Böcker

This volume represents the proceedings of the Noncommutative Geometry Workshop that was held as part of the thematic program on operator algebras at the Fields Institute in May 2008. Pioneered by Alain Connes starting in the late 1970s, noncommutative geometry was originally inspired by global analysis, topology, operator algebras, and quantum physics. Its main applications were to settle some long-standing conjectures, such as the Novikov conjecture and the Baum-Connes conjecture. Next came the impact of spectral geometry and the way the spectrum of a geometric operator, like the Laplacian, holds information about the geometry and topology of a manifold, as in the celebrated Weyl law. This has now been vastly generalized through Connes' notion of spectral triples. Finally, recent years have witnessed the impact of number theory, algebraic geometry and the theory of motives, and quantum field theory on noncommutative geometry. Almost all of these aspects are touched upon with new results in the papers of this volume. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers in both mathematics and theoretical physics who are interested in noncommutative geometry and its applications.

The work of Alain Connes has cut a wide swath across several areas of mathematics and physics. Reflecting its broad spectrum and profound impact on the contemporary mathematical landscape, this collection of articles covers a wealth of topics at the forefront of research in operator algebras, analysis, noncommutative geometry, topology, number theory and physics.

The conference covered the latest research and future areas of potential exploration surrounding topology and physics, number theory, as well as index theory and its ramifications in geometry.

The conference covered the latest research and future areas of potential exploration surrounding topology and physics, number theory, as well as index theory and its ramifications in geometry.

This is the first existing volume that collects lectures on this important and fast developing subject in mathematics. The lectures are given by leading experts in the field and the range of topics is kept as broad as possible by including both the algebraic and the differential aspects of noncommutative geometry as well as recent applications to theoretical physics and number theory.