In the construction of spectral manifolds in noncommutative geometry, a higher degree Heisenberg commutation relation involving the Dirac operator and the Feynman slash of real scalar fields naturally appears and implies, by equality with the index formula, the quantization of the volume. We first show that this condition implies that the manifold decomposes into disconnected spheres, which will represent quanta of geometry. We then refine the condition by involving the real structure and two types of geometric quanta, and show that connected spin manifolds with large quantized volume are then obtained as solutions. The two algebras $M_2(\mathbb{H})$ and $M_4(\mathbb{C})$ are obtained, which are the exact constituents of the standard model. Using the two maps from $M_4$ to $S^4$ the four-manifold is built out of a very large number of the two kinds of spheres of Planckian volume. We give several physical applications of this scheme such as quantization of the cosmological constant, mimetic dark matter, and area quantization of black holes.

• Received 8 September 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.091302