Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 64: 445-457
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1117-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Noncommutative electromagnetism as a large N gauge theory

Institut für Physik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Newtonstraße 15, 12489, Berlin, Germany

^* e-mail: hsyang@kias.re.kr

Received: 12 March 2009
Revised: 29 June 2009
Published online: 16 October 2009

Abstract

We map noncommutative (NC) U(1) gauge theory on ℝ _C ^d ×ℝ _NC ²ⁿ to U(N→∞) Yang–Mills theory on ℝ _C ^d , where ℝ _C ^d is a d-dimensional commutative spacetime while ℝ _NC ²ⁿ is a 2n-dimensional NC space. The resulting U(N) Yang–Mills theory on ℝ _C ^d is equivalent to that obtained by the dimensional reduction of (d+2n)-dimensional U(N) Yang–Mills theory onto ℝ _C ^d . We show that the gauge-Higgs system (A _μ ,Φ ^a ) in the U(N→∞) Yang–Mills theory on ℝ _C ^d leads to an emergent geometry in the (d+2n)-dimensional spacetime whose metric was determined by Ward a long time ago. In particular, the 10-dimensional gravity for d=4 and n=3 corresponds to the emergent geometry arising from the 4-dimensional vector multiplet in the AdS/CFT duality. We further elucidate the emergent gravity by showing that the gauge-Higgs system (A _μ ,Φ ^a ) in half-BPS configurations describes self-dual Einstein gravity.