Canonical noncommutativity in special and general relativity

Abstract

There are two main points that concern us in this short contribution. The first one is the conceptual distinction between a intrinsically noncommuting spacetime, i.e., one where the coordinate functions fail to commute among themselves, on the one hand, and the proposal of noncommuting position operators, on the other. The second point concerns a particular form of position operator noncommutativity, involving the spin of the particle, to which several approaches seem to converge. We also suggest an analysis of the effects of spacetime curvature on position operator noncommutativity.