The geometrical methods in modem mathematical physics and the developments in Geometry and Global Analysis motivated by physical problems are being intensively worked out in contemporary mathematics. In particular, during the last decades a new branch of Global Analysis, Stochastic Differential Geometry, was formed to meet the needs of Mathematical Physics. It deals with a lot of various second order differential equations on finite and infinite-dimensional manifolds arising in Physics, and its validity is based on the deep inter-relation between modem Differential Geometry and certain parts of the Theory of Stochastic Processes, discovered not so long ago. The foundation of our topic is presented in the contemporary mathematical literature by a lot of publications devoted to certain parts of the above-mentioned themes and connected with the scope of material of this book. There exist some monographs on Stochastic Differential Equations on Manifolds (e. g. [9,36,38,87]) based on the Stratonovich approach. In [7] there is a detailed description of It6 equations on manifolds in Belopolskaya-Dalecky form. Nelson's book [94] deals with Stochastic Mechanics and mean derivatives on Riemannian Manifolds. The books and survey papers on the Lagrange approach to Hydrodynamics [2,31,73,88], etc. , give good presentations of the use of infinite-dimensional ordinary differential geometry in ideal hydrodynamics. We should also refer here to [89,102], to the previous books by the author [53,64], and to many others.

Many physical phenomena are described by nonlinear evolution equation. Those that are integrable provide various mathematical methods, presented by experts in this tutorial book, to find special analytic solutions to both integrable and partially integrable equations. The direct method to build solutions includes the analysis of singularities a la Painleve, Lie symmetries leaving the equation invariant, extension of the Hirota method, construction of the nonlinear superposition formula. The main inverse method described here relies on the bi-hamiltonian structure of integrable equations. The book also presents some extension to equations with discrete independent and dependent variables.
The different chapters face from different points of view the theory of exact solutions and of the complete integrability of nonlinear evolution equations. Several examples and applications to concrete problems allow the reader to experience directly the power of the different machineries involved."

The Hauptvermutung is the conjecture that any two triangulations of a poly hedron are combinatorially equivalent. The conjecture was formulated at the turn of the century, and until its resolution was a central problem of topology. Initially, it was verified for low-dimensional polyhedra, and it might have been expected that furt her development of high-dimensional topology would lead to a verification in all dimensions. However, in 1961 Milnor constructed high-dimensional polyhedra with combinatorially inequivalent triangulations, disproving the Hauptvermutung in general. These polyhedra were not manifolds, leaving open the Hauptvermu tung for manifolds. The development of surgery theory led to the disproof of the high-dimensional manifold Hauptvermutung in the late 1960's. Unfortunately, the published record of the manifold Hauptvermutung has been incomplete, as was forcefully pointed out by Novikov in his lecture at the Browder 60th birthday conference held at Princeton in March 1994. This volume brings together the original 1967 papers of Casson and Sulli van, and the 1968/1972 'Princeton notes on the Hauptvermutung' of Armstrong, Rourke and Cooke, making this work physically accessible. These papers include several other results which have become part of the folklore but of which proofs have never been published. My own contribution is intended to serve as an intro duction to the Hauptvermutung, and also to give an account of some more recent developments in the area. In preparing the original papers for publication, only minimal changes of punctuation etc."

This book deals with such important subjects as variational methods, the continuity method, parabolic equations on fiber bundles, ideas concerning points of concentration, blowing-up technique, geometric and topological methods. It explores important geometric problems that are of interest to many mathematicians and scientists but have only recently been partially solved.

Gauge theory, symplectic geometry and symplectic topology are important areas at the crossroads of several mathematical disciplines. The present book, with expertly written surveys of recent developments in these areas, includes some of the first expository material of Seiberg-Witten theory, which has revolutionised the subjects since its introduction in late 1994. Topics covered include: introductions to Seiberg-Witten theory, to applications of the S-W theory to four-dimensional manifold topology, and to the classification of symplectic manifolds; an introduction to the theory of pseudo-holomorphic curves and to quantum cohomology; algebraically integrable Hamiltonian systems and moduli spaces; the stable topology of gauge theory, Morse-Floer theory; pseudo-convexity and its relations to symplectic geometry; generating functions; Frobenius manifolds and topological quantum field theory.

Gaussian scale-space is one of the best understood multi-resolution techniques available to the computer vision and image analysis community. It is the purpose of this book to guide the reader through some of its main aspects. During an intensive weekend in May 1996 a workshop on Gaussian scale-space theory was held in Copenhagen, which was attended by many of the leading experts in the field. The bulk of this book originates from this workshop. Presently there exist only two books on the subject. In contrast to Lindeberg's monograph (Lindeberg, 1994e) this book collects contributions from several scale space researchers, whereas it complements the book edited by ter Haar Romeny (Haar Romeny, 1994) on non-linear techniques by focusing on linear diffusion. This book is divided into four parts. The reader not so familiar with scale-space will find it instructive to first consider some potential applications described in Part 1. Parts II and III both address fundamental aspects of scale-space. Whereas scale is treated as an essentially arbitrary constant in the former, the latter em phasizes the deep structure, i.e. the structure that is revealed by varying scale. Finally, Part IV is devoted to non-linear extensions, notably non-linear diffusion techniques and morphological scale-spaces, and their relation to the linear case. The Danish National Science Research Council is gratefully acknowledged for providing financial support for the workshop under grant no. 9502164."

This book develops a modern presentation of Continuum Mechanics, oriented towards numerical applications in the ?elds of nonlinear analysis of solids, structures and ?uids. Kinematics of the continuum deformation, including pull-back/push-forward transformations between di erent con?gurations; stress and strain measures; objective stress rate and strain rate measures; balance principles; constitutive relations, with emphasis on elasto-plasticity of metals and variational prin- ples are developed using general curvilinear coordinates. Being tensor analysis the indispensable tool for the development of the continuum theory in general coordinates, in the appendix an overview of t- soranalysisisalsopresented. Embedded in the theoretical presentation, application examples are dev- oped to deepen the understanding of the discussed concepts. Even though the mathematical presentation of the di erent topics is quite rigorous; an e ort is made to link formal developments with engineering ph- ical intuition. This book is based on two graduate courses that the authors teach at the Engineering School of the University of Buenos Aires and it is intended for graduate engineering students majoring in mechanics and for researchers in the ?elds of applied mechanics and numerical methods. VIII Preface I am grateful to Klaus-Jurgen Bathe for introducing me to Computational Mechanics, for his enthusiasm, for his encouragement to undertake challenges and for his friendship."

curvilinear coordinates. This treatment includes in particular a direct proof of the three-dimensional Korn inequality in curvilinear coordinates. The fourth and last chapter, which heavily relies on Chapter 2, begins by a detailed description of the nonlinear and linear equations proposed by W.T. Koiter for modeling thin elastic shells. These equations are "two-dimensional," in the sense that they are expressed in terms of two curvilinear coordinates used for de?ning the middle surface of the shell. The existence, uniqueness, and regularity of solutions to the linear Koiter equations is then established, thanks this time to a fundamental "Korn inequality on a surface" and to an "in?nit- imal rigid displacement lemma on a surface." This chapter also includes a brief introduction to other two-dimensional shell equations. Interestingly, notions that pertain to di?erential geometry per se, suchas covariant derivatives of tensor ?elds, are also introduced in Chapters 3 and 4, where they appear most naturally in the derivation of the basic boundary value problems of three-dimensional elasticity and shell theory. Occasionally, portions of the material covered here are adapted from - cerpts from my book "Mathematical Elasticity, Volume III: Theory of Shells," published in 2000by North-Holland, Amsterdam; in this respect, I am indebted to Arjen Sevenster for his kind permission to rely on such excerpts. Oth- wise, the bulk of this work was substantially supported by two grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China Project No. 9040869, CityU 100803 and Project No. 9040966, CityU 100604].

In this book the authors develop and work out applications to gravity and gauge theories and their interactions with generic matter fields, including spinors in full detail. Spinor fields in particular appear to be the prototypes of truly gauge-natural objects, which are not purely gauge nor purely natural, so that they are a paradigmatic example of the intriguing relations between gauge natural geometry and physical phenomenology. In particular, the gauge natural framework for spinors is developed in this book in full detail, and it is shown to be fundamentally related to the interaction between fermions and dynamical tetrad gravity.

The book covers topics in the theory of algebraic transformation groups and algebraic varieties which are very much at the frontier of mathematical research.

Two surveys introducing readers to the subjects of harmonic analysis on semi-simple spaces and group theoretical methods, and preparing them for the study of more specialised literature. This book will be very useful to students and researchers in mathematics, theoretical physics and those chemists dealing with quantum systems.

The aim of this work is threefold: First it should be a monographical work on natural bundles and natural op erators in differential geometry. This is a field which every differential geometer has met several times, but which is not treated in detail in one place. Let us explain a little, what we mean by naturality. Exterior derivative commutes with the pullback of differential forms. In the background of this statement are the following general concepts. The vector bundle A kT* M is in fact the value of a functor, which associates a bundle over M to each manifold M and a vector bundle homomorphism over f to each local diffeomorphism f between manifolds of the same dimension. This is a simple example of the concept of a natural bundle. The fact that exterior derivative d transforms sections of A kT* M into sections of A k+1T* M for every manifold M can be expressed by saying that d is an operator from A kT* M into A k+1T* M."

The relation between quantum theory and the theory of gravitation remains one of the most outstanding unresolved issues of modern physics. According to general expectation, general relativity as well as quantum (field) theory in a fixed background spacetime cannot be fundamentally correct. Hence there should exist a broader theory comprising both in appropriate limits, i.e., quantum gravity. This book gives readers a comprehensive introduction accessible to interested non-experts to the main issues surrounding the search for quantum gravity. These issues relate to fundamental questions concerning the various formalisms of quantization; specific questions concerning concrete processes, like gravitational collapse or black-hole evaporation; and the all important question concerning the possibility of experimental tests of quantum-gravity effects.

The present volume is an introduction to nonlinear waves and soliton theory in the special environment of compact spaces such as closed curves and surfaces and other domain contours.

The first part of the book introduces the mathematical concept required for treating the manifolds considered. An introduction to the theory of motion of curves and surfaces is given. The second and third parts discuss the modeling of various physical solitons on compact systems.

This volume contains revised papers that were presented at the international workshop entitled Computational Methods for Algebraic Spline Surfaces ("COMPASS"), which was held from September 29 to October 3, 2003, at Schloss Weinberg, Kefermarkt (A- tria). The workshop was mainly devoted to approximate algebraic geometry and its - plications. The organizers wanted to emphasize the novel idea of approximate implici- zation, that has strengthened the existing link between CAD / CAGD (Computer Aided Geometric Design) and classical algebraic geometry. The existing methods for exact implicitization (i. e., for conversion from the parametric to an implicit representation of a curve or surface) require exact arithmetic and are too slow and too expensive for industrial use. Thus the duality of an implicit representation and a parametric repres- tation is only used for low degree algebraic surfaces such as planes, spheres, cylinders, cones and toroidal surfaces. On the other hand, this duality is a very useful tool for - veloping ef?cient algorithms. Approximate implicitization makes this duality available for general curves and surfaces. The traditional exact implicitization of parametric surfaces produce global rep- sentations, which are exact everywhere. The surface patches used in CAD, however, are always de?ned within a small box only; they are obtained for a bounded parameter domain (typically a rectangle, or - in the case of "trimmed" surface patches - a subset of a rectangle). Consequently, a globally exact representation is not really needed in practice."

The present book is a translation and an expansion of lecture notes cor- sponding to a course of Mathematics of Control delivered during four years at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chauss ees (Marne-la-Vall ee, France) to Master students. A reduced version of this course has also been given at the Master level at the University of Paris-Sud since eight years. It may the- fore serve as lecture notes for teaching at the Master or PhD level but also as a comprehensive introduction to researchers interested in atness and more generally in the mathematical theory of nite dimensional systems and c- trol. This book may be seen as an outcome of the applied research policy pi- oneered by the Ecole des Mines de Paris (now MINES-ParisTech), France, aiming not only at academic excellence, but also at collaborating with - dustries on speci c innovative projects to enhance technological innovation using the most advanced know-how. This in uence, though indirectly visible, mainly concerns the originality of some of the topics addressed here which are, in a sense, a theoretic synthesis of the author's applied contributions and viewpoints in the control eld, continuously elaborated and modi ed in contact with the industrial realities. Such a synthesis wouldn't have been made possible without the scienti c trust and nancial support of many c- panies during periods ranging from two to ten years.

This collection of survey lectures in mathematics traces the career of Beno Eckmann, whose work ranges across a broad spectrum of mathematical concepts from topology through homological algebra to group theory. One of our most influential living mathematicians, Eckmann has been associated for nearly his entire professional life with the Swiss Federal Technical University (ETH) at Zurich, as student, lecturer, professor, and professor emeritus.

General relativity ranks among the most accurately tested fundamental theories in all of physics. Deficiencies in mathematical and conceptual understanding still exist, hampering further progress. This book collects surveys by experts in mathematical relativity writing about the current status of, and problems in, their fields. There are four contributions for each of the following mathematical areas: differential geometry and differential topology, analytical methods and differential equations, and numerical methods.

From the reviews of the 1st edition:

"This book provides a comprehensive and detailed account of different topics in algorithmic 3-dimensional topology, culminating with the recognition procedure for Haken manifolds and including the up-to-date results in computer enumeration of 3-manifolds. Originating from lecture notes of various courses given by the author over a decade, the book is intended to combine the pedagogical approach of a graduate textbook (without exercises) with the completeness and reliability of a research monograph...

All the material, with few exceptions, is presented from the peculiar point of view of special polyhedra and special spines of 3-manifolds. This choice contributes to keep the level of the exposition really elementary.

In conclusion, the reviewer subscribes to the quotation from the back cover: "the book fills a gap in the existing literature and will become a standard reference for algorithmic 3-dimensional topology both for graduate students and researchers."

Zentralblatt fur Mathematik 2004

For this 2nd edition, new results, new proofs, and commentaries for a better orientation of the reader have been added. In particular, in Chapter 7 several new sections concerning applications of the computer program "3-Manifold Recognizer" have been included. "

The text of this book has its origins more than twenty- ve years ago. In the seminar of the Dutch Singularity Theory project in 1982 and 1983, the second-named author gave a series of lectures on Mixed Hodge Structures and Singularities, accompanied by a set of hand-written notes. The publication of these notes was prevented by a revolution in the subject due to Morihiko Saito: the introduction of the theory of Mixed Hodge Modules around 1985. Understanding this theory was at the same time of great importance and very hard, due to the fact that it uni es many di erent theories which are quite complicated themselves: algebraic D-modules and perverse sheaves. The present book intends to provide a comprehensive text about Mixed Hodge Theory with a view towards Mixed Hodge Modules. The approach to Hodge theory for singular spaces is due to Navarro and his collaborators, whose results provide stronger vanishing results than Deligne s original theory. Navarro and Guill en also lled a gap in the proof that the weight ltration on the nearby cohomology is the right one. In that sense the present book corrects and completes the second-named author s thesis."

Supermanifolds and Supergroups explains the basic ingredients of super manifolds and super Lie groups. It starts with super linear algebra and follows with a treatment of super smooth functions and the basic definition of a super manifold. When discussing the tangent bundle, integration of vector fields is treated as well as the machinery of differential forms. For super Lie groups the standard results are shown, including the construction of a super Lie group for any super Lie algebra. The last chapter is entirely devoted to super connections.

The book requires standard undergraduate knowledge on super differential geometry and super Lie groups.

The central object of this book is the measure of geometric quantities describing N a subset of the Euclidean space (E ,), endowed with its standard scalar product. Let us state precisely what we mean by a geometric quantity. Consider a subset N S of points of the N-dimensional Euclidean space E , endowed with its standard N scalar product. LetG be the group of rigid motions of E . We say that a 0 quantity Q(S) associated toS is geometric with respect toG if the corresponding 0 quantity Q[g(S)] associated to g(S) equals Q(S), for all g?G . For instance, the 0 diameter ofS and the area of the convex hull ofS are quantities geometric with respect toG . But the distance from the origin O to the closest point ofS is not, 0 since it is not invariant under translations ofS. It is important to point out that the property of being geometric depends on the chosen group. For instance, ifG is the 1 N group of projective transformations of E , then the property ofS being a circle is geometric forG but not forG , while the property of being a conic or a straight 0 1 line is geometric for bothG andG . This point of view may be generalized to any 0 1 subsetS of any vector space E endowed with a groupG acting on it.

This book is the first to systematically explore the classification and function theory of complex homogeneous bounded domains. The Siegel domains are discussed in detail, and proofs are presented. Using the normal Siegel domains to realize the homogeneous bounded domains, we can obtain more property of the geometry and the function theory on homogeneous bounded domains.

The first survey of its kind, written by internationally known, outstanding experts who developed substantial parts of the field. The book contains an introduction written by Remmert, describing the history of the subject, and is very useful to graduate students and researchers in complex analysis, algebraic geometry and differential geometry.

A detailed treatment of the geometric aspects of discrete groups was carried out by Raghunathan in his book "Discrete subgroups of Lie Groups" which appeared in 1972. In particular he covered the theory of lattices in nilpotent and solvable Lie groups, results of Mal'cev and Mostow, and proved the Borel density theorem and local rigidity theorem ofSelberg-Weil. He also included some results on unipotent elements of discrete subgroups as well as on the structure of fundamental domains. The chapters concerning discrete subgroups of semi simple Lie groups are essentially concerned with results which were obtained in the 1960's. The present book is devoted to lattices, i.e. discrete subgroups of finite covolume, in semi-simple Lie groups. By "Lie groups" we not only mean real Lie groups, but also the sets of k-rational points of algebraic groups over local fields k and their direct products. Our results can be applied to the theory of algebraic groups over global fields. For example, we prove what is in some sense the best possible classification of "abstract" homomorphisms of semi-simple algebraic group over global fields."