Suitable for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers, this self-contained textbook provides an introduction to the mathematics lying at the foundations of bifurcation theory. The theory is built up gradually, beginning with the well-developed approach to singularity theory through right-equivalence. The text proceeds with contact equivalence of map-germs and finally presents the path formulation of bifurcation theory. This formulation, developed partly by the author, is more general and more flexible than the original one dating from the 1980s. A series of appendices discuss standard background material, such as calculus of several variables, existence and uniqueness theorems for ODEs, and some basic material on rings and modules. Based on the author's own teaching experience, the book contains numerous examples and illustrations. The wealth of end-of-chapter problems develop and reinforce understanding of the key ideas and techniques: solutions to a selection are provided.

This book contains a detailed account of the result of the author's recent Annals paper and JAMS paper on arithmetic invariant, including -invariant, L-invariant, and similar topics. This book can be regarded as an introductory text to the author's previous book p-Adic Automorphic Forms on Shimura Varieties. Written as a down-to-earth introduction to Shimura varieties, this text includes many examples and applications of the theory that provide motivation for the reader. Since it is limited to modular curves and the corresponding Shimura varieties, this book is not only a great resource for experts in the field, but it is also accessible to advanced graduate students studying number theory. Key topics include non-triviality of arithmetic invariants and special values of L-functions; elliptic curves over complex and p-adic fields; Hecke algebras; scheme theory; elliptic and modular curves over rings; and Shimura curves.

This Lecture Notes volume is the fruit of two research-level summer schools jointly organized by the GTEM node at Lille University and the team of Galatasaray University (Istanbul): "Geometry and Arithmetic of Moduli Spaces of Coverings (2008)" and "Geometry and Arithmetic around Galois Theory (2009)". The volume focuses on geometric methods in Galois theory. The choice of the editors is to provide a complete and comprehensive account of modern points of view on Galois theory and related moduli problems, using stacks, gerbes and groupoids. It contains lecture notes on etale fundamental group and fundamental group scheme, and moduli stacks of curves and covers. Research articles complete the collection.

Traditionally, Lorentzian geometry has been used as a necessary tool to understand general relativity, as well as to explore new genuine geometric behaviors, far from classical Riemannian techniques. Recent progress has attracted a renewed interest in this theory for many researchers: long-standing global open problems have been solved, outstanding Lorentzian spaces and groups have been classified, new applications to mathematical relativity and high energy physics have been found, and further connections with other geometries have been developed. Samples of these fresh trends are presented in this volume, based on contributions from the VI International Meeting on Lorentzian Geometry, held at the University of Granada, Spain, in September, 2011. Topics such as geodesics, maximal, trapped and constant mean curvature submanifolds, classifications of manifolds with relevant symmetries, relations between Lorentzian and Finslerian geometries, and applications to mathematical physics are included. This book will be suitable for a broad audience of differential geometers, mathematical physicists and relativists, and researchers in the field.

The study of qualitative aspects of PDE's has always attracted much attention from the early beginnings. More recently, once basic issues about PDE's, such as existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions, have been understood quite well, research on topological and/or geometric properties of their solutions has become more intense. The study of these issues is attracting the interest of an increasing number of researchers and is now a broad and well-established research area, with contributions that often come from experts from disparate areas of mathematics, such as differential and convex geometry, functional analysis, calculus of variations, mathematical physics, to name a few. This volume collects a selection of original results and informative surveys by a group of international specialists in the field, analyzes new trends and techniques and aims at promoting scientific collaboration and stimulating future developments and perspectives in this very active area of research.

The mathematical theory of "open" dynamical systems is a creation of the twentieth century. Its humble beginnings focused on ideas of Laplace transforms applied to linear problems of automatic control and to the analysis and synthesis of electrical circuits. However during the second half of the century, it flowered into a field based on an array of sophisticated mathematical concepts and techniques from algebra, nonlinear analysis and differential geometry. The central notion is that of a dynamical system that exchanges matter, energy, or information with its surroundings, i.e. an "open" dynamical system. The mathema tization of this notion evolved considerably over the years. The early development centered around the input/output point of view and led to important results, particularly in controller design. Thinking about open systems as a "black box" that accepts stimuli and produces responses has had a wide influence also in areas outside engineering, for example in biology, psychology, and economics. In the early 1960's, especially through the work of Kalman, input/state/output models came in vogue. This model class accommodates very nicely the internal initial conditions that are essentially always present in a dynamical system. The introduction of input/state/output models led to a tempestuous development that made systems and control into a mature discipline with a wide range of concepts, results, algorithms, and applications.

Focusing on two central conjectures of Asymptotic Geometric Analysis, the Kannan-Lovasz-Simonovits spectral gap conjecture and the variance conjecture, these Lecture Notes present the theory in an accessible way, so that interested readers, even those who are not experts in the field, will be able to appreciate the treated topics. Offering a presentation suitable for professionals with little background in analysis, geometry or probability, the work goes directly to the connection between isoperimetric-type inequalities and functional inequalities, giving the interested reader rapid access to the core of these conjectures. In addition, four recent and important results in this theory are presented in a compelling way. The first two are theorems due to Eldan-Klartag and Ball-Nguyen, relating the variance and the KLS conjectures, respectively, to the hyperplane conjecture. Next, the main ideas needed prove the best known estimate for the thin-shell width given by Guedon-Milman and an approach to Eldan's work on the connection between the thin-shell width and the KLS conjecture are detailed.

Shafarevich's Basic Algebraic Geometry has been a classic and universally used introduction to the subject since its first appearance over 40 years ago. As the translator writes in a prefatory note, ``For all [advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate] students, and for the many specialists in other branches of math who need a liberal education in algebraic geometry, Shafarevich's book is a must.'' The third edition, in addition to some minor corrections, now offers a new treatment of the Riemann--Roch theorem for curves, including a proof from first principles. Shafarevich's book is an attractive and accessible introduction to algebraic geometry, suitable for beginning students and nonspecialists, and the new edition is set to remain a popular introduction to the field.

The first instances of deformation theory were given by Kodaira and Spencer for complex structures and by Gerstenhaber for associative algebras. Since then, deformation theory has been applied as a useful tool in the study of many other mathematical structures, and even today it plays an important role in many developments of modern mathematics. This volume collects a few self-contained and peer-reviewed papers by experts which present up-to-date research topics in algebraic and motivic topology, quantum field theory, algebraic geometry, noncommutative geometry and the deformation theory of Poisson algebras. They originate from activities at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn.

Hans Grauert was one of the world's leading mathematicians in the field of Several Complex Variables; he not only shaped the development of this area decisively but was also responsible for some of its most important results. This representative selection of mathematical papers exhibits Grauert's influential research and reflects two decades of excellence. In this edition, each paper has been augmented by a detailed commentary, thus offering a comprehensive survey of the development of this fascinating subject from its beginnings in Munster and Goettingen. Hans Grauert may be regarded as a direct successor of Gauss, holding a chair at Goettingen that before him was held by Siegel, Weyl, Hilbert, Riemann and Gauss.

This is the most comprehensive survey of the mathematical life of the legendary Paul Erdos (1913-1996), one of the most versatile and prolific mathematicians of our time. For the first time, all the main areas of Erdos' research are covered in a single project. Because of overwhelming response from the mathematical community, the project now occupies over 1000 pages, arranged into two volumes. These volumes contain both high level research articles as well as key articles that survey some of the cornerstones of Erdos' work, each written by a leading world specialist in the field. A special chapter "Early Days", rare photographs, and art related to Erdos complement this striking collection. A unique contribution is the bibliography on Erdos' publications: the most comprehensive ever published. This new edition, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Paul Erdos' birth, contains updates on many of the articles from the two volumes of the first edition, several new articles from prominent mathematicians, a new introduction, more biographical information about Paul Erdos, and an updated list of publications. The first volume contains the unique chapter "Early Days", which features personal memories of Paul Erdos by a number of his colleagues. The other three chapters cover number theory, random methods, and geometry. All of these chapters are essentially updated, most notably the geometry chapter that covers the recent solution of the problem on the number of distinct distances in finite planar sets, which was the most popular of Erdos' favorite geometry problems.

The algebraic techniques developed by Kakde will almost certainly lead eventually to major progress in the study of congruences between automorphic forms and the main conjectures of non-commutative Iwasawa theory for many motives. Non-commutative Iwasawa theory has emerged dramatically over the last decade, culminating in the recent proof of the non-commutative main conjecture for the Tate motive over a totally real p-adic Lie extension of a number field, independently by Ritter and Weiss on the one hand, and Kakde on the other. The initial ideas for giving a precise formulation of the non-commutative main conjecture were discovered by Venjakob, and were then systematically developed in the subsequent papers by Coates-Fukaya-Kato-Sujatha-Venjakob and Fukaya-Kato. There was also parallel related work in this direction by Burns and Flach on the equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture. Subsequently, Kato discovered an important idea for studying the K_1 groups of non-abelian Iwasawa algebras in terms of the K_1 groups of the abelian quotients of these Iwasawa algebras. Kakde's proof is a beautiful development of these ideas of Kato, combined with an idea of Burns, and essentially reduces the study of the non-abelian main conjectures to abelian ones. The approach of Ritter and Weiss is more classical, and partly inspired by techniques of Frohlich and Taylor. Since many of the ideas in this book should eventually be applicable to other motives, one of its major aims is to provide a self-contained exposition of some of the main general themes underlying these developments. The present volume will be a valuable resource for researchers working in both Iwasawa theory and the theory of automorphic forms.

Geometric Modeling and Algebraic Geometry, though closely related, are traditionally represented by two almost disjoint scientific communities. Both fields deal with objects defined by algebraic equations, but the objects are studied in different ways. In 12 chapters written by leading experts, this book presents recent results which rely on the interaction of both fields. Some of these results have been obtained from a major European project in geometric modeling.

Contents and treatment are fresh and very different from the standard treatments Presents a fully constructive version of what it means to do algebra The exposition is not only clear, it is friendly, philosophical, and considerate even to the most naive or inexperienced reader

The purpose of this book is to develop the foundations of potential theory and rational dynamics on the Berkovich projective line over an arbitrary complete, algebraically closed non-Archimedean field. In addition to providing a concrete and 'elementary' introduction to Berkovich analytic spaces and to potential theory and rational iteration on the Berkovich line, the book contains applications to arithmetic geometry and arithmetic dynamics. A number of results in the book are new, and most have not previously appeared in book form. Three appendices - on analysis, R-trees, and Berkovich's general theory of analytic spaces - are included to make the book as self-contained as possible. The authors first give a detailed description of the topological structure of the Berkovich projective line and then introduce the Hsia kernel, the fundamental kernel for potential theory. Using the theory of metrized graphs, they define a Laplacian operator on the Berkovich line and construct theories of capacities, harmonic and subharmonic functions, and Green's functions, all of which are strikingly similar to their classical complex counterparts. After developing a theory of multiplicities for rational functions, they give applications to non-Archimedean dynamics, including local and global equidistribution theorems, fixed point theorems, and Berkovich space analogues of many fundamental results from the classical Fatou-Julia theory of rational iteration. They illustrate the theory with concrete examples and exposit Rivera-Letelier's results concerning rational dynamics over the field of p-adic complex numbers. They also establish Berkovich space versions of arithmetic results such as the Fekete-Szego theorem and Bilu's equidistribution theorem.

The relationship between Tropical Geometry and Mirror Symmetry goes back to the work of Kontsevich and Y. Soibelman (2000), who applied methods of non-archimedean geometry (in particular, tropical curves) to Homological Mirror Symmetry. In combination with the subsequent work of Mikhalkin on the "tropical" approach to Gromov-Witten theory and the work of Gross and Siebert, Tropical Geometry has now become a powerful tool. Homological Mirror Symmetry is the area of mathematics concentrated around several categorical equivalences connecting symplectic and holomorphic (or algebraic) geometry. The central ideas first appeared in the work of Maxim Kontsevich (1993). Roughly speaking, the subject can be approached in two ways: either one uses Lagrangian torus fibrations of Calabi-Yau manifolds (the so-called Strominger-Yau-Zaslow picture, further developed by Kontsevich and Soibelman) or one uses Lefschetz fibrations of symplectic manifolds (suggested by Kontsevich and further developed by Seidel). Tropical Geometry studies piecewise-linear objects which appear as "degenerations" of the corresponding algebro-geometric objects.

Commutative algebra is a rapidly growing subject that is developing in many different directions. This volume presents several of the most recent results from various areas related to both Noetherian and non-Noetherian commutative algebra. This volume contains a collection of invited survey articles by some of the leading experts in the field. The authors of these chapters have been carefully selected for their important contributions to an area of commutative-algebraic research. Some topics presented in the volume include: generalizations of cyclic modules, zero divisor graphs, class semigroups, forcing algebras, syzygy bundles, tight closure, Gorenstein dimensions, tensor products of algebras over fields, as well as many others. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students interested in studying the many topics related to commutative algebra.

21st Century Kinematics focuses on algebraic problems in the analysis and synthesis of mechanisms and robots, compliant mechanisms, cable-driven systems and protein kinematics. The specialist contributors provide the background for a series of presentations at the 2012 NSF Workshop. The text shows how the analysis and design of innovative mechanical systems yield increasingly complex systems of polynomials, characteristic of those systems. In doing so, it takes advantage of increasingly sophisticated computational tools developed for numerical algebraic geometry and demonstrates the now routine derivation of polynomial systems dwarfing the landmark problems of even the recent past. The 21st Century Kinematics workshop echoes the NSF-supported 1963 Yale Mechanisms Teachers Conference that taught a generation of university educators the fundamental principles of kinematic theory. As such these proceedings will provide admirable supporting theory for a graduate course in modern kinematics and should be of considerable interest to researchers in mechanical design, robotics or protein kinematics or who have a broader interest in algebraic geometry and its applications.

The aim of this work is to offer a concise and self-contained 'lecture-style' introduction to the theory of classical rigid geometry established by John Tate, together with the formal algebraic geometry approach launched by Michel Raynaud. These Lectures are now viewed commonly as an ideal means of learning advanced rigid geometry, regardless of the reader's level of background. Despite its parsimonious style, the presentation illustrates a number of key facts even more extensively than any other previous work.

This Lecture Notes Volume is a revised and slightly expanded version of a preprint that appeared in 2005 at the University of Munster's Collaborative Research Center "Geometrical Structures in Mathematics.""

This book is intended to be an introduction to the fascinating theory ofgeneralized polygons for both the graduate student and the specialized researcher in the field. It gathers together a lot of basic properties (some of which are usually referred to in research papers as belonging to folklore) and very recent and sometimes deep results. I have chosen a fairly strict geometrical approach, which requires some knowledge of basic projective geometry. Yet, it enables one to prove some typically group-theoretical results such as the determination of the automorphism groups of certain Moufang polygons. As such, some basic group-theoretical knowledge is required of the reader. The notion of a generalized polygon is a relatively recent one. But it is one of the most important concepts in incidence geometry. Generalized polygons are the building bricks of Tits buildings. They are the prototypes and precursors of more general geometries such as partial geometries, partial quadrangles, semi-partial ge ometries, near polygons, Moore geometries, etc. The main examples of generalized polygons are the natural geometries associated with groups of Lie type of relative rank 2. This is where group theory comes in and we come to the historical raison d'etre of generalized polygons. In 1959 Jacques Tits discovered the simple groups of type 3D by classifying the 4 trialities with at least one absolute point of a D -geometry. The method was 4 predominantly geometric, and so not surprisingly the corresponding geometries (the twisted triality hexagons) came into play. Generalized hexagons were born.

This monograph brings together a collection of results on the non-vanishing of L functions. The presentation, though based largely on the original papers, is suitable for independent study. A number of exercises have also been provided to aid in this endeavour. The exercises are of varying difficulty and those which require more effort have been marked with an asterisk. The authors would like to thank the Institut d'Estudis Catalans for their encouragement of this work through the Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize. We would also like to thank the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton for the excellent conditions which made this work possible, as well as NSERC, NSF and FCAR for funding. Princeton M. Ram Murty August, 1996 V. Kumar Murty Introduction Since the time of Dirichlet and Riemann, the analytic properties of L-functions have been used to establish theorems of a purely arithmetic nature. The distri bution of prime numbers in arithmetic progressions is intimately connected with non-vanishing properties of various L-functions. With the subsequent advent of the Tauberian theory as developed by Wiener and Ikehara, these arithmetical the orems have been shown to be equivalent to the non-vanishing of these L-functions on the line Re(s) = 1. In the 1950's, a new theme was introduced by Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer.

Although the study of dynamical systems is mainly concerned with single trans formations and one-parameter flows (i. e. with actions of Z, N, JR, or JR+), er godic theory inherits from statistical mechanics not only its name, but also an obligation to analyze spatially extended systems with multi-dimensional sym metry groups. However, the wealth of concrete and natural examples, which has contributed so much to the appeal and development of classical dynamics, is noticeably absent in this more general theory. A remarkable exception is provided by a class of geometric actions of (discrete subgroups of) semi-simple Lie groups, which have led to the discovery of one of the most striking new phenomena in multi-dimensional ergodic theory: under suitable circumstances orbit equivalence of such actions implies not only measurable conjugacy, but the conjugating map itself has to be extremely well behaved. Some of these rigidity properties are inherited by certain abelian subgroups of these groups, but the very special nature of the actions involved does not allow any general conjectures about actions of multi-dimensional abelian groups. Beyond commuting group rotations, commuting toral automorphisms and certain other algebraic examples (cf. [39]) it is quite difficult to find non-trivial smooth Zd-actions on finite-dimensional manifolds. In addition to scarcity, these examples give rise to actions with zero entropy, since smooth Zd-actions with positive entropy cannot exist on finite-dimensional, connected manifolds. Cellular automata (i. e.

Based on lectures held at the 7th Villa de Leyva summer school, this book presents an introduction to topics of current interest in the interface of geometry, topology and physics. It is aimed at graduate students in physics or mathematics with interests in geometric, algebraic as well as topological methods and their applications to quantum field theory.This volume contains the written notes corresponding to lectures given by experts in the field. They cover current topics of research in a way that is suitable for graduate students of mathematics or physics interested in the recent developments and interactions between geometry, topology and physics. The book also contains contributions by younger participants, displaying the ample range of topics treated in the school. A key feature of the present volume is the provision of a pedagogical presentation of rather advanced topics, in a way which is suitable for both mathematicians and physicists.

Particles with fractional statistics interpolating between bosons and fermions have attracted considerable interest from mathematical physicists. In recent years it has emerged that these so-called anyons have rather unexpected applications, such as the fractional Hall effect, anyonic excitations in films of liquid helium, and high-temrperature superconductivity. Furthermore, they are discussed also in the context of conformal field theories. This book is a systematic and pedagogical introduction that considers the subject of anyons from many different points of view. In particular, the author presents the relation of anyons to braid groups and Chern-Simons field theory and devotes three chapters to physical applications. The book, while being of interest to researchers, primarily addresses advanced students of mathematics and physics.

This two-part volume contains numerous examples and insights on various topics. The authors have taken pains to present the material rigorously and coherently. This book will be immensely useful to mathematicians and graduate students working in algebraic geometry, arithmetic algebraic geometry, complex analysis and related fields.