Derived Representation Schemes and Noncommutative Geometry

TL;DR

This paper surveys how derived representation schemes and representation homology provide a noncommutative geometric framework, addressing limitations of classical schemes in capturing properties of noncommutative algebras.

Contribution

It confirms that derived functors and homology measure the failure of classical representation schemes to reflect noncommutative geometric properties.

Findings

Representation homology obstructs classical properties in representation schemes.

Derived functors better capture noncommutative geometric structures.

Explicit examples illustrate the theory and its applications.

Abstract

Some 15 years ago M. Kontsevich and A. Rosenberg [KR] proposed a heuristic principle according to which the family of schemes ${Rep_n(A)}$ parametrizing the finite-dimensional represen- tations of a noncommutative algebra A should be thought of as a substitute or "approximation" for Spec(A). The idea is that every property or noncommutative geometric structure on A should induce a corresponding geometric property or structure on $Rep_n(A)$ for all n. In recent years, many interesting structures in noncommutative geometry have originated from this idea. In practice, however, if an associative algebra A possesses a property of geometric nature (e.g., A is a NC complete intersection, Cohen-Macaulay, Calabi-Yau, etc.), it often happens that, for some n, the scheme $Rep_n(A)$ fails to have the corresponding property in the usual algebro-geometric sense. The reason for this seems to be that the representation functor $Rep_n$ is not "exact" and should be replaced by its derived functor $DRep_n$ (in the sense of non-abelian homological algebra). The higher homology of $DRep_n(A)$, which we call representation homology, obstructs $Rep_n(A)$ from having the desired property and thus measures the failure of the Kontsevich-Rosenberg "approximation." In this paper, which is mostly a survey, we prove several results confirming this intuition. We also give a number of examples and explicit computations illustrating the theory developed in [BKR] and [BR].