Noncommutative Geometry à la Connes

Abstract

During the last two decades Alain Connes developed Noncommutative Geometry, which allows to unify two of the basic theories of modern physics: General Relativity and the Standard Model of Particle Physics. In the noncommutative framework the Higgs boson, which had previously to be put in by hand, and many of the ad hoc features of the standard model, appear in a natural way. The aim of my talk is to motivate this unification from basic physical principles and to give a flavour of its derivation. I will give an overview of the basic tools such as almost-commutative spectral triples and the spectral action principle. The latter allows to derive the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian and the Standard Model Lagrangian together with a set of relations among the Standard Model parameters.