文档介绍:arXiv:gr-qc/9906059 v2 25 Jul 1999
Quan
∗
Lecure
tum
m
m
An
articles
LMU-TPW
m
Non-Lo
A
extensiv
Univ
giv
short
en
as
utativ
utativ
calit
ersit
at
w
e
historical
ell
99-11
the
bibliograph
y’.
as
F¨
e
e
´
e
Lab
In
mo
geometry
ohringer
de
to
ternational
Max-Planc
utati
dels
part
oratoire
P
review
aris-Sud,
y
of
of
,
has
v
space-time
esp
the
Ring
e
is
Sc
b
ecially
een
ho
made
de
Geometry
original
J.
k-Institut
ol
Abstract
added
Madore
6,
Bˆ
Ph
of
the
atimen
of
1
and
Gra
D-80805
ysique
literature.
some
efforts
con
vitation,
to
taining
use
f
ur
t
¨
recen
to
Th
211,
it
Ph
for
M
Erice:
add
as
t
´
eorique
reference
unc
¨
literature
ysik
an
F-91405
a
P
ultra
gra
hen
16th
edestrians
vitational
violet
to
Course:
in
recen
Orsa
the
regulator.
t
field
field
‘Classical
review
y
to
of
∗
and
1 Introduction
To control the divergences which from the very beginning had plagued quan-
tum electrodynamics, Heisenberg already in the 1930’s proposed to replace
the space-time continuum by a lattice structure. A lattice however breaks
Lorentz invariance and can hardly be considered as fundamental. It was Sny-
der [201, 202] who first had the idea of using a mutative structure at
small length scales to introduce an effective cut-off in field theory similar to a
lattice but at the same time maintaining Lorentz invariance. His suggestion
came however just at the time when the renormalization program finally suc-
cessfully became an effective if rather ad hoc prescription for predicting numbers
from the theory of quantum electrodynamics and it was for the most part ig-
nored. Some time later von Neumann introduced the term ‘mutative
geometry’ to refer in general to a geometry in which an algebra o