The aim of this book is to give an account of some important new developments in the study of the Yamabe problem on quaternionic contact manifolds. This book covers the conformally flat case of the quaternionic Heisenberg group or sphere, where complete and detailed proofs are given, together with a chapter on the conformal curvature tensor introduced very recently by the authors. The starting point of the considered problems is the well-known Folland-Stein Sobolev type embedding and its sharp form that is determined based on geometric analysis. This book also sits at the interface of the generalization of these fundamental questions motivated by the Carnot-Caratheodory geometry of quaternionic contact manifolds, which have been recently the focus of extensive research motivated by problems in analysis, geometry, mathematical physics and the applied sciences. Through the beautiful resolution of the Yamabe problem on model quaternionic contact spaces, the book serves as an introduction to this field for graduate students and novice researchers, and as a research monograph suitable for experts as well.

The subject matter in this volume is Schwarz's lemma which has become a crucial theme in many branches of research in mathematics for more than a hundred years to date. This volume of lecture notes focuses on its differential geometric developments by several excellent authors including, but not limited to, L Ahlfors, S S Chern, Y C Lu, S T Yau and H L Royden.

This volume can be approached by a reader who has basic knowledge on complex analysis and Riemannian geometry. It contains major historic differential geometric generalizations on Schwarz's lemma and provides the necessary information while making the whole volume as concise as ever.

Since the foundational work of Lagrange on the differential equation to be satisfied by a minimal surface of the Euclidean space, the theory of minimal submanifolds have undergone considerable developments, involving techniques from related areas, such as the analysis of partial differential equations and complex analysis. On the other hand, the relativity theory has led to the study of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds, which turns out to be the most general framework for the study of minimal submanifolds. However, most of the recent books on the subject still present the theory only in the Riemannian case. For the first time, this book provides a self-contained and accessible introduction to the subject in the general setting of pseudo-Riemannian geometry, only assuming from the reader some basic knowledge about manifold theory. Several classical results, such as the Weierstrass representation formula for minimal surfaces, and the minimizing properties of complex submanifolds, are presented in full generality without sacrificing the clarity of exposition. Finally, a number of very recent results on the subject, including the classification of equivariant minimal hypersurfaces in pseudo-Riemannian space forms and the characterization of minimal Lagrangian surfaces in some pseudo-K hler manifolds are given.

This independent account of modern ideas in differential geometry shows how they can be used to understand and extend classical results in integral geometry. The authors explore the influence of total curvature on the metric structure of complete, non-compact Riemannian 2-manifolds, although their work can be extended to more general spaces. Each chapter features open problems, making the volume a suitable learning aid for graduate students and non-specialists who seek an introduction to this modern area of differential geometry.

This book contains the Proceedings of the Ninth Mathematics of Surfaces Conference organised by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and held in Cambridge, UK, on 4th - 6th September 2000. The papers describe the mathematical construction, representation, approximation, recognition, and manipulation of surfaces, with an emphasis on computational methods. Highlights include invited papers from M. Floater (SNTEF, Norway), O. Faugeras (INRIA, France), P. Giblin (Liverpool University, UK), M.-S. Kim (Seoul National University, Korea), J. Koenderink (University of Utrecht, Netherlands), N. Patrikalakis (MIT, USA), H. Pottmann (Technical University of Vienna, Austria) and R. Schaback (University of GAttingen, Germany).

"Differential Geometry" offers a concise introduction to some basic notions of modern differential geometry and their applications to solid mechanics and physics.

Concepts such as manifolds, groups, fibre bundles and groupoids are first introduced within a purely topological framework. They are shown to be relevant to the description of space-time, configuration spaces of mechanical systems, symmetries in general, microstructure and local and distant symmetries of the constitutive response of continuous media.

Once these ideas have been grasped at the topological level, the differential structure needed for the description of physical fields is introduced in terms of differentiable manifolds and principal frame bundles. These mathematical concepts are then illustrated with examples from continuum kinematics, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, Cauchy fluxes and dislocation theory.

This book will be useful for researchers and graduate students in science and engineering.

This book gives a modern differential geometric treatment of linearly nonholonomically constrained systems. It discusses in detail what is meant by symmetry of such a system and gives a general theory of how to reduce such a symmetry using the concept of a differential space and the almost Poisson bracket structure of its algebra of smooth functions. The above theory is applied to the concrete example of Carathodory's sleigh and the convex rolling rigid body. The qualitative behavior of the motion of the rolling disk is treated exhaustively and in detail. In particular, it classifies all motions of the disk, including those where the disk falls flat and those where it nearly falls flat.

The geometric techniques described in this book for symmetry reduction have not appeared in any book before. Nor has the detailed description of the motion of the rolling disk. In this respect, the authors are trail-blazers in their respective fields.

This volume contains research and expository papers on recent advances in foliations and Riemannian geometry. Some of the topics covered in this volume include: topology, geometry, dynamics and analysis of foliations, curvature, submanifold theory, Lie groups and harmonic maps.Among the contributions, readers may find an extensive survey on characteristic classes of Riemannian foliations offering also new results, an article showing the uniform simplicity of certain diffeomorphism groups, an exposition of convergences of contact structures to foliations from the point of view of Thurston's and Thurston-Bennequin's inequalities, a discussion about Fatou-Julia decompositions for foliations and a description of singular Riemannian foliations on spaces without conjugate points.Papers on submanifold theory focus on the existence of graphs with prescribed mean curvature and mean curvature flow for spacelike graphs, isometric and conformal deformations and detailed surveys on totally geodesic submanifolds in symmetric spaces, cohomogeneity one actions on hyperbolic spaces and rigidity of geodesic spheres in space forms. Geometric realizability of curvature tensors and curvature operators are also treated in this volume with special attention to the affine and the pseudo-Riemannian settings. Also, some contributions on biharmonic maps and submanifolds enrich the scope of this volume in providing an overview of different topics of current interest in differential geometry.

This book pioneers a nonlinear Fredholm theory in a general class of spaces called polyfolds. The theory generalizes certain aspects of nonlinear analysis and differential geometry, and combines them with a pinch of category theory to incorporate local symmetries. On the differential geometrical side, the book introduces a large class of `smooth' spaces and bundles which can have locally varying dimensions (finite or infinite-dimensional). These bundles come with an important class of sections, which display properties reminiscent of classical nonlinear Fredholm theory and allow for implicit function theorems. Within this nonlinear analysis framework, a versatile transversality and perturbation theory is developed to also cover equivariant settings. The theory presented in this book was initiated by the authors between 2007-2010, motivated by nonlinear moduli problems in symplectic geometry. Such problems are usually described locally as nonlinear elliptic systems, and they have to be studied up to a notion of isomorphism. This introduces symmetries, since such a system can be isomorphic to itself in different ways. Bubbling-off phenomena are common and have to be completely understood to produce algebraic invariants. This requires a transversality theory for bubbling-off phenomena in the presence of symmetries. Very often, even in concrete applications, geometric perturbations are not general enough to achieve transversality, and abstract perturbations have to be considered. The theory is already being successfully applied to its intended applications in symplectic geometry, and should find applications to many other areas where partial differential equations, geometry and functional analysis meet. Written by its originators, Polyfold and Fredholm Theory is an authoritative and comprehensive treatise of polyfold theory. It will prove invaluable for researchers studying nonlinear elliptic problems arising in geometric contexts.

Mikhail Gromov introduced pseudo-holomorphic curves into symplectic geometry in 1985. Since then, pseudo-holomorphic curves have taken on great importance in many fields. The aim of this book is to present the original proof of Gromov's compactness theorem for pseudo-holomorphic curves in detail. Local properties of pseudo-holomorphic curves are investigated and proved from a geometric viewpoint. Properties of particular interest are isoperimetric inequalities, a monotonicity formula, gradient bounds and the removal of singularities. A special chapter is devoted to relevant features of hyperbolic surfaces, where pairs of pants decomposition and thickthin decomposition are described. The book is essentially self-contained and should also be accessible to students with a basic knowledge of differentiable manifolds and covering spaces.

This book brings together geometric tools and their applications for Information analysis. It collects current and many uses of in the interdisciplinary fields of Information Geometry Manifolds in Advanced Signal, Image & Video Processing, Complex Data Modeling and Analysis, Information Ranking and Retrieval, Coding, Cognitive Systems, Optimal Control, Statistics on Manifolds, Machine Learning, Speech/sound recognition and natural language treatment which are also substantially relevant for the industry.

This invaluable book, based on the many years of teaching experience of both authors, introduces the reader to the basic ideas in differential topology. Among the topics covered are smooth manifolds and maps, the structure of the tangent bundle and its associates, the calculation of real cohomology groups using differential forms (de Rham theory), and applications such as the PoincariHopf theorem relating the Euler number of a manifold and the index of a vector field. Each chapter contains exercises of varying difficulty for which solutions are provided. Special features include examples drawn from geometric manifolds in dimension 3 and Brieskorn varieties in dimensions 5 and 7, as well as detailed calculations for the cohomology groups of spheres and tori.

Inverse boundary problems are a rapidly developing area of applied mathematics with applications throughout physics and the engineering sciences. However, the mathematical theory of inverse problems remains incomplete and needs further development to aid in the solution of many important practical problems.

Inverse Boundary Spectral Problems develop a rigorous theory for solving several types of inverse problems exactly. In it, the authors consider the following:

"Can the unknown coefficients of an elliptic partial differential equation be determined from the eigenvalues and the boundary values of the eigenfunctions?"

Along with this problem, many inverse problems for heat and wave equations are solved.

The authors approach inverse problems in a coordinate invariant way, that is, by applying ideas drawn from differential geometry. To solve them, they apply methods of Riemannian geometry, modern control theory, and the theory of localized wave packets, also known as Gaussian beams. The treatment includes the relevant background of each of these areas.

Although the theory of inverse boundary spectral problems has been in development for at least 10 years, until now the literature has been scattered throughout various journals. This self-contained monograph summarizes the relevant concepts and the techniques useful for dealing with them.

In 1993, M Kontsevich proposed a conceptual framework for explaining the phenomenon of mirror symmetry. Mirror symmetry had been discovered by physicists in string theory as a duality between families of three-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. Kontsevich's proposal uses Fukaya's construction of the A -category of Lagrangian submanifolds on the symplectic side and the derived category of coherent sheaves on the complex side. The theory of mirror symmetry was further enhanced by physicists in the language of D-branes and also by Strominger-Yau-Zaslow in the geometric set-up of (special) Lagrangian torus fibrations. It rapidly expanded its scope across from geometry, topology, algebra to physics.In this volume, leading experts in the field explore recent developments in relation to homological mirror symmetry, Floer theory, D-branes and Gromov-Witten invariants. Kontsevich-Soibelman describe their solution to the mirror conjecture on the abelian variety based on the deformation theory of A -categories, and Ohta describes recent work on the Lagrangian intersection Floer theory by Fukaya-Oh-Ohta-Ono which takes an important step towards a rigorous construction of the A -category. There follow a number of contributions on the homological mirror symmetry, D-branes and the Gromov-Witten invariants, e.g. Getzler shows how the Toda conjecture follows from recent work of Givental, Okounkov and Pandharipande. This volume provides a timely presentation of the important developments of recent years in this rapidly growing field.

Submanifolds.

Variations of the Length Integral.

Complex Manifolds.

Homogeneous Spaces.

Symmetric Spaces.

Characteristic Classes.

Appendices.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Summary of Basic Notations.

Index.

Tight and taut manifolds form an important and special class of surfaces within differential geometry. This book contains in-depth articles by experts in the field as well as an extensive and comprehensive bibliography. This survey will open new avenues for further research and will be an important addition to any geometer's library.

This book is a translation of an authoritative introductory text based on a lecture series delivered by the renowned differential geometer, Professor S S Chern in Beijing University in 1980. The original Chinese text, authored by Professor Chern and Professor Wei-Huan Chen, was a unique contribution to the mathematics literature, combining simplicity and economy of approach with depth of contents. The present translation is aimed at a wide audience, including (but not limited to) advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, as well as physicists interested in the diverse applications of differential geometry to physics. In addition to a thorough treatment of the fundamentals of manifold theory, exterior algebra, the exterior calculus, connections on fiber bundles, Riemannian geometry, Lie groups and moving frames, and complex manifolds (with a succinct introduction to the theory of Chern classes), and an appendix on the relationship between differential geometry and theoretical physics, this book includes a new chapter on Finsler geometry and a new appendix on the history and recent developments of differential geometry, the latter prepared specially for this edition by Professor Chern to bring the text into perspectives.

This book is a translation of an authoritative introductory text based on a lecture series delivered by the renowned differential geometer, Professor S S Chern in Beijing University in 1980. The original Chinese text, authored by Professor Chern and Professor Wei-Huan Chen, was a unique contribution to the mathematics literature, combining simplicity and economy of approach with depth of contents. The present translation is aimed at a wide audience, including (but not limited to) advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, as well as physicists interested in the diverse applications of differential geometry to physics. In addition to a thorough treatment of the fundamentals of manifold theory, exterior algebra, the exterior calculus, connections on fiber bundles, Riemannian geometry, Lie groups and moving frames, and complex manifolds (with a succinct introduction to the theory of Chern classes), and an appendix on the relationship between differential geometry and theoretical physics, this book includes a new chapter on Finsler geometry and a new appendix on the history and recent developments of differential geometry, the latter prepared specially for this edition by Professor Chern to bring the text into perspectives.

This book explores and articulates the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal from two points of view: the philosophical and the mathematical. The first section covers the history of these ideas in philosophy. Chapter one, entitled 'The continuous and the discrete in Ancient Greece, the Orient and the European Middle Ages,' reviews the work of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and other Ancient Greeks; the elements of early Chinese, Indian and Islamic thought; and early Europeans including Henry of Harclay, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Thomas Bradwardine and Nicolas Oreme. The second chapter of the book covers European thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Arnauld, Fermat, and more. Chapter three, 'The age of continuity,' discusses eighteenth century mathematicians including Euler and Carnot, and philosophers, among them Hume, Kant and Hegel. Examining the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fourth chapter describes the reduction of the continuous to the discrete, citing the contributions of Bolzano, Cauchy and Reimann. Part one of the book concludes with a chapter on divergent conceptions of the continuum, with the work of nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophers and mathematicians, including Veronese, Poincare, Brouwer, and Weyl. Part two of this book covers contemporary mathematics, discussing topology and manifolds, categories, and functors, Grothendieck topologies, sheaves, and elementary topoi. Among the theories presented in detail are non-standard analysis, constructive and intuitionist analysis, and smooth infinitesimal analysis/synthetic differential geometry. No other book so thoroughly covers the history and development of the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal.

This edition of the invaluable text Modern Differential Geometry for Physicists contains an additional chapter that introduces some of the basic ideas of general topology needed in differential geometry. A number of small corrections and additions have also been made.These lecture notes are the content of an introductory course on modern, coordinate-free differential geometry which is taken by first-year theoretical physics PhD students, or by students attending the one-year MSc course “Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces� at Imperial College. The book is concerned entirely with mathematics proper, although the emphasis and detailed topics have been chosen bearing in mind the way in which differential geometry is applied these days to modern theoretical physics. This includes not only the traditional area of general relativity but also the theory of Yang-Mills fields, nonlinear sigma models and other types of nonlinear field systems that feature in modern quantum field theory.The volume is divided into four parts: (i) introduction to general topology; (ii) introductory coordinate-free differential geometry; (iii) geometrical aspects of the theory of Lie groups and Lie group actions on manifolds; (iv) introduction to the theory of fibre bundles. In the introduction to differential geometry the author lays considerable stress on the basic ideas of “tangent space structure�, which he develops from several different points of view — some geometrical, others more algebraic. This is done with awareness of the difficulty which physics graduate students often experience when being exposed for the first time to the rather abstract ideas of differential geometry.

What do the classification of algebraic surfaces, Weyl's dimension formula and maximal orders in central simple algebras have in common? All are related to a type of manifold called locally mixed symmetric spaces in this book. The presentation emphasizes geometric concepts and relations and gives each reader the "roter Faden", starting from the basics and proceeding towards quite advanced topics which lie at the intersection of differential and algebraic geometry, algebra and topology. Avoiding technicalities and assuming only a working knowledge of real Lie groups, the text provides a wealth of examples of symmetric spaces. The last two chapters deal with one particular case (Kuga fiber spaces) and a generalization (elliptic surfaces), both of which require some knowledge of algebraic geometry. Of interest to topologists, differential or algebraic geometers working in areas related to arithmetic groups, the book also offers an introduction to the ideas for non-experts.

In this book, the author traces the development of the study of spherical minimal immersions over the past 30 plus years. In trying to make this monograph accessible not just to research mathematicians but mathematics graduate students as well, the author included sizeable pieces of material from upper level undergraduate courses, additional graduate level topics such as Felix Klein¿s classic treatise of the icosahedron, and a valuable selection of exercises at the end of each chapter.

This book is divided into fourteen chapters, with 18 appendices as introduction to prerequisite topological and algebraic knowledge, etc. The first seven chapters focus on local analysis. This part can be used as a fundamental textbook for graduate students of theoretical physics. Chapters 8-10 discuss geometry on fibre bundles, which facilitates further reference for researchers. The last four chapters deal with the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, its generalization and its application, quantum anomaly, cohomology field theory and noncommutative geometry, giving the reader a glimpse of the frontier of current research in theoretical physics.

This introductory book offers a unique and unified overview of symplectic geometry, highlighting the differential properties of symplectic manifolds. It consists of six chapters: Some Algebra Basics, Symplectic Manifolds, Cotangent Bundles, Symplectic G-spaces, Poisson Manifolds, and A Graded Case, concluding with a discussion of the differential properties of graded symplectic manifolds of dimensions (0,n). It is a useful reference resource for students and researchers interested in geometry, group theory, analysis and differential equations.This book is also inspiring in the emerging field of Geometric Science of Information, in particular the chapter on Symplectic G-spaces, where Jean-Louis Koszul develops Jean-Marie Souriau's tools related to the non-equivariant case of co-adjoint action on Souriau's moment map through Souriau's Cocycle, opening the door to Lie Group Machine Learning with Souriau-Fisher metric.

Bridging the gap between modern differential geometry and the mathematical physics of general relativity, this text, in its second edition, includes new and expanded material on topics such as the instability of both geodesic completeness and geodesic incompleteness for general space-times, geodesic connectibility, the generic condition, the sectional curvature function in a neighbourhood of degenerate two-plane, and proof of the Lorentzian Splitting Theorem.;Five or more copies may be ordered by college or university stores at a special student price, available on request.