Cyclic cocycles in the spectral action

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the spectral action perturbed by a gauge potential can be expressed as an infinite series of Chern--Simons and Yang--Mills actions, extending previous work to higher dimensions and more general cocycles.

Contribution

It introduces a new infinite odd $(b,B)$-cocycle derived from the spectral action expansion, extending prior results to all orders and dimensions beyond 4.

Findings

Spectral action expanded as series of Chern--Simons and Yang--Mills actions

Derived conditions for cocycle entireness and convergence

Showed trivial pairing of the cocycle with $K_1$ due to gauge invariance

Abstract

We show that the spectral action, when perturbed by a gauge potential, can be written as a series of Chern--Simons actions and Yang--Mills actions of all orders. In the odd orders, generalized Chern--Simons forms are integrated against an odd $(b,B)$-cocycle, whereas, in the even orders, powers of the curvature are integrated against $(b,B)$-cocycles that are Hochschild cocycles as well. In both cases, the Hochschild cochains are derived from the Taylor series expansion of the spectral action Tr$(f(D+V))$ in powers of $V=\pi_D(A)$, but unlike the Taylor expansion we expand in increasing order of the forms in $A$. This extends [Connes--Chamseddine 2006], which computes only the scale-invariant part of the spectral action, works in dimension at most 4, and assumes the vanishing tadpole hypothesis. In our situation, we obtain a truly infinite odd $(b,B)$-cocycle. The analysis involved draws from recent results in multiple operator integration, which also allows us to give conditions under which this cocycle is entire, and under which our expansion is absolutely convergent. As a consequence of our expansion and of the gauge invariance of the spectral action, we show that the odd $(b,B)$-cocycle pairs trivially with $K_1$.