Differential geometry and general relativity with algebraifolds
Tobias Fritz
TL;DR
This work develops a manifold-free framework for differential geometry by introducing algebraifolds, commutative $k$-algebras with finitely generated projective derivations, enabling standard tensor calculus, connections, and curvature to be formulated algebraically. By establishing a duality between derivations and 1-forms and proving a universal property for 1-forms, the authors replicate manifold-like calculus in an algebraic setting, with Colombeau algebras and fibred geometries as prominent examples. They extend these tools to define tensors, Lie derivatives, Levi-Civita connections, Riemannian curvature, and the Einstein field equations, highlighting the framework’s potential to model GR on non-manifold spaces. The approach offers new perspectives on spacetime singularities, parameterized spacetimes, and generalized function algebras, suggesting a robust, algebraic route to GR and beyond with potential benefits for singularity handling and quantum-gravity-inspired extensions.
Abstract
It is often noted that many of the basic concepts of differential geometry, such as the definition of connection, are purely algebraic in nature. Here, we review and extend existing work on fully algebraic formulations of differential geometry which eliminate the need for an underlying manifold. While the literature contains various independent approaches to this, we focus on one particular approach that we argue to be the most natural one based on the definition of "algebraifold", by which we mean a commutative algebra $\mathcal{A}$ for which the module of derivations of $\mathcal{A}$ is finitely generated projective. Over $\mathbb{R}$ as the base ring, this class of algebras includes the algebra $C^\infty(M)$ of smooth functions on a manifold $M$, and similarly for analytic functions. An importantly different example is the Colombeau algebra of generalized functions on $M$, which makes distributional differential geometry an instance of our formalism. Another instance is a fibred version of smooth differential geometry, since any smooth submersion $M \to N$ makes $C^\infty(M)$ into an algebraifold with $C^\infty(N)$ as the base ring. Over any field $k$ of characteristic zero, examples include the algebra of regular functions on a smooth affine variety as well as any function field. Our development of differential geometry in terms of algebraifolds comprises tensors, connections, curvature, geodesics and we briefly consider general relativity.