The Yang–Mills functional and Laplace’s equation on quantum Heisenberg manifolds

In this paper, we discuss the Yang–Mills functional and a certain family of its critical points on quantum Heisenberg manifolds using noncommutative geometrical methods developed by A. Connes and M. Rieffel. In our main result, we construct a certain family of connections on a projective module over a quantum Heisenberg manifold that gives rise to critical points of the Yang–Mills functional. Moreover, we show that there is a relationship between this particular family of critical points of the Yang–Mills functional and Laplace’s equation on multiplication-type, skew-symmetric elements of quantum Heisenberg manifolds; recall that Laplacian is the leading term for the coupled set of equations making up the Yang–Mills equation. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.