Noncommutative de Rham cohomology of finite groups

L. Castellani, R. Catenacci, M. Debernardi, C. Pagani

Published 2002-11-05, updated 2002-11-17Version 2

We study de Rham cohomology for various differential calculi on finite groups G up to order 8. These include the permutation group S_3, the dihedral group D_4 and the quaternion group Q. Poincare' duality holds in every case, and under some assumptions (essentially the existence of a top form) we find that it must hold in general. A short review of the bicovariant (noncommutative) differential calculus on finite G is given for selfconsistency. Exterior derivative, exterior product, metric, Hodge dual, connections, torsion, curvature, and biinvariant integration can be defined algebraically. A projector decomposition of the braiding operator is found, and used in constructing the projector on the space of 2-forms. By means of the braiding operator and the metric a knot invariant is defined for any finite group.