The relevance of commutator methods in spectral and scattering theory has been known for a long time, and numerous interesting results have been ob tained by such methods. The reader may find a description and references in the books by Putnam [Pu], Reed-Simon [RS] and Baumgartel-Wollenberg [BW] for example. A new point of view emerged around 1979 with the work of E. Mourre in which the method of locally conjugate operators was introduced. His idea proved to be remarkably fruitful in establishing detailed spectral properties of N-body Hamiltonians. A problem that was considered extremely difficult be fore that time, the proof of the absence of a singularly continuous spectrum for such operators, was then solved in a rather straightforward manner (by E. Mourre himself for N = 3 and by P. Perry, 1. Sigal and B. Simon for general N). The Mourre estimate, which is the main input of the method, also has consequences concerning the behaviour of N-body systems at large times. A deeper study of such propagation properties allowed 1. Sigal and A. Soffer in 1985 to prove existence and completeness of wave operators for N-body systems with short range interactions without implicit conditions on the potentials (for N = 3, similar results were obtained before by means of purely time-dependent methods by V. Enss and by K. Sinha, M. Krishna and P. Muthuramalingam). Our interest in commutator methods was raised by the major achievements mentioned above.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Albert Crumeyrolle, who died on June 17, 1992. In organizing the volume we gave priority to: articles summarizing Crumeyrolle's own work in differential geometry, general relativity and spinors, articles which give the reader an idea of the depth and breadth of Crumeyrolle's research interests and influence in the field, articles of high scientific quality which would be of general interest. In each of the areas to which Crumeyrolle made significant contribution - Clifford and exterior algebras, Weyl and pure spinors, spin structures on manifolds, principle of triality, conformal geometry - there has been substantial progress. Our hope is that the volume conveys the originality of Crumeyrolle's own work, the continuing vitality of the field he influenced, and the enduring respect for, and tribute to, him and his accomplishments in the mathematical community. It isour pleasure to thank Peter Morgan, Artibano Micali, Joseph Grifone, Marie Crumeyrolle and Kluwer Academic Publishers for their help in preparingthis volume.

Much progress has been made during the last decade on the subjects of non commutative valuation rings, and of semi-hereditary and Priifer orders in a simple Artinian ring which are considered, in a sense, as global theories of non-commu tative valuation rings. So it is worth to present a survey of the subjects in a self-contained way, which is the purpose of this book. Historically non-commutative valuation rings of division rings were first treat ed systematically in Schilling's Book [Sc], which are nowadays called invariant valuation rings, though invariant valuation rings can be traced back to Hasse's work in [Has]. Since then, various attempts have been made to study the ideal theory of orders in finite dimensional algebras over fields and to describe the Brauer groups of fields by usage of "valuations", "places", "preplaces", "value functions" and "pseudoplaces". In 1984, N. 1. Dubrovin defined non-commutative valuation rings of simple Artinian rings with notion of places in the category of simple Artinian rings and obtained significant results on non-commutative valuation rings (named Dubrovin valuation rings after him) which signify that these rings may be the correct def inition of valuation rings of simple Artinian rings. Dubrovin valuation rings of central simple algebras over fields are, however, not necessarily to be integral over their centers.

This book presents methods of solving problems in three areas of elementary combinatorial mathematics: classical combinatorics, combinatorial arithmetic, and combinatorial geometry. In each topic, brief theoretical discussions are immediately followed by carefully worked-out examples of increasing degrees of difficulty, and by exercises that range from routine to rather challenging. While this book emphasizes some methods that are not usually covered in beginning university courses, it nevertheless teaches techniques and skills that are useful not only in the specific topics covered here. There are approximately 310 examples and 650 exercises. Jiri Herman is the headmaster of a prestigious secondary school (Gymnazium) in Brno, Radan Kucera is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Masaryk University in Brno, and Jaromir Simsa is a researcher at the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The translator, Karl Dilcher, is Professor of Mathematics at Dalhousie University in Canada. This book can be seen as a continuation of the previous book by the same authors and also translated by Karl Dilcher, Equations and Inequalities: Elementary Problems and Theorems in Algebra and Number Theory (Springer-Verlag 2000).

This book is about the development of reciprocity laws, starting from conjectures of Euler and discussing the contributions of Legendre, Gauss, Dirichlet, Jacobi, and Eisenstein. Readers knowledgeable in basic algebraic number theory and Galois theory will find detailed discussions of the reciprocity laws for quadratic, cubic, quartic, sextic and octic residues, rational reciprocity laws, and Eisenstein's reciprocity law. An extensive bibliography will be of interest to readers interested in the history of reciprocity laws or in the current research in this area.

1. The Subject Matter. Consider a complex semisimple Lie group G with Lie algebra g and Weyl group W. In this book, we present a geometric perspective on the following circle of ideas: polynomials The "vertices" of this graph are some of the most important objects in representation theory. Each has a theory in its own right, and each has had its own independent historical development. - A nilpotent orbit is an orbit of the adjoint action of G on g which contains the zero element of g in its closure. (For the special linear group 2 G = SL(n, C), whose Lie algebra 9 is all n x n matrices with trace zero, an adjoint orbit consists of all matrices with a given Jordan canonical form; such an orbit is nilpotent if the Jordan form has only zeros on the diagonal. In this case, the nilpotent orbits are classified by partitions of n, given by the sizes of the Jordan blocks.) The closures of the nilpotent orbits are singular in general, and understanding their singularities is an important problem. - The classification of irreducible Weyl group representations is quite old.

The transparency and power of geometric constructions has been a source of inspiration to generations of mathematicians. The beauty and persuasion of pictures, communicated in words or drawings, continues to provide the intuition and arguments for working with complicated concepts and structures of modern mathematics. This volume contains a selection of articles exploring geometric approaches to problems in algebra, algebraic geometry and number theory.

Key topics include:

* Curves and their Jacobians

* Algebraic surfaces

* Moduli spaces, Shimura varieties

* Motives and motivic integration

* Number-theoretic applications, rational points

* Combinatorial aspects of algebraic geometry

* Quantum cohomology

* Arithmetic dynamical systems

The collection gives a representative sample of problems and most recent results in algebraic and arithmetic geometry; the text can serve as an intense introduction for graduate students and those wishing to pursue research in these areas.

Contributors: I. Bauer, F. Bogomolov, N. Budur, F. Catanese, C.-L. Chai, R. Cluckers, C. De Concini, J.S. Ellenberg, F. Grunewald, B. Hassett, T. Hausel, F. Loeser, J. Pineiro, R. Pink, C. Procesi, M. Spitzweck, P. Swinnerton-Dyer, L. Szpiro, H. Tamvakis, Y. Tschinkel, T.J. Tucker, A. Venkatesh, and Y.G. Zarhin.

From the 28th of February through the 3rd of March, 2001, the Department of Math ematics of the University of Florida hosted a conference on the many aspects of the field of Ordered Algebraic Structures. Officially, the title was "Conference on Lattice Ordered Groups and I-Rings," but its subject matter evolved beyond the limitations one might associate with such a label. This volume is officially the proceedings of that conference, although, likewise, it is more accurate to view it as a complement to that event. The conference was the fourth in wh at has turned into aseries of similar conferences, on Ordered Algebraic Structures, held in consecutive years. The first, held at the University of Florida in Spring, 1998, was a modest and informal affair. The fifth is in the final planning stages at this writing, for March 7-9, 2002, at Vanderbilt University. And although these events remain modest and reasonably informal, their scope has broadened, as they have succeeded in attracting mathematicians from other, related fields, as weIl as from more distant lands."

This book is concerned with cardinal number valued functions defined for any Boolean algebra. Examples of such functions are independence, which assigns to each Boolean algebra the supremum of the cardinalities of its free subalgebras, and cellularity, which gives the supremum of cardinalities of sets of pairwise disjoint elements. Twenty-one such functions are studied in detail, and many more in passing. The questions considered are the behaviour of these functions under algebraic operations such as products, free products, ultraproducts, and their relationships to one another. Assuming familiarity with only the basics of Boolean algebras and set theory, through simple infinite combinatorics and forcing, the book reviews current knowledge about these functions, giving complete proofs for most facts. A special feature of the book is the attention given to open problems, of which 185 are formulated. Based on Cardinal Functions on Boolean Algebras (1990) and Cardinal Invariants on Boolean Algebras (1996) by the same author, the present work is much larger than either of these. It contains solutions to many of the open problems of the earlier volumes. Among the new topics are continuum cardinals on Boolean algebras, with a lengthy treatment of the reaping number. Diagrams at the end of the book summarize the relationships between the functions for many important classes of Boolean algebras, including interval algebras, tree algebras and superatomic algebras.

The book offers a new approach to information theory that is more general then the classical approach by Shannon. The classical definition of information is given for an alphabet of symbols or for a set of mutually exclusive propositions (a partition of the probability space ) with corresponding probabilities adding up to 1. The new definition is given for an arbitrary cover of , i.e. for a set of possibly overlapping propositions. The generalized information concept is called novelty and it is accompanied by two new concepts derived from it, designated as information and surprise, which describe "opposite" versions of novelty, information being related more to classical information theory and surprise being related more to the classical concept of statistical significance. In the discussion of these three concepts and their interrelations several properties or classes of covers are defined, which turn out to be lattices. The book also presents applications of these new concepts, mostly in statistics and in neuroscience.

This book describes the latest Russian research covering the structure and algorithmic properties of Boolean algebras from the algebraic and model-theoretic points of view. A significantly revised version of the author's Countable Boolean Algebras (Nauka, Novosibirsk, 1989), the text presents new results as well as a selection of open questions on Boolean algebras. Other current features include discussions of the Kottonen algebras in enrichments by ideals and automorphisms, and the properties of the automorphism groups.

The term Noncommutative Dynamics can be interpreted in several ways. It is used in this book to refer to a set of phenomena associated with the dynamics of quantum systems of the simplest kind that involve rigorous mathematical structures associated with infinitely many degrees of freedom. The dynamics of such a system is represented by a one-parameter group of automorphisms of a noncommutative algebra of observables, and the author focuses primarily on the most concrete case in which that algebra consists of all bounded operators on a Hilbert space. This subject overlaps with several mathematical areas of current interest, including quantum field theory, the dynamics of open quantum systems, noncommutative geometry, and both classical and noncommutative probability theory. This is the first book to give a systematic presentation of progress during the past fifteen years on the classification of E-semigroups up to cocycle conjugacy. There are many new results that cannot be found in the existing literature, as well as significant reformulations and simplifications of the theory as it exists today. William Arveson is Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published two previous books with Springer-Verlag, An Invitation to C*-algebras (1976) and A Short Course on Spectral Theory (2001).

This book presents the general theory of categorical closure operators together with examples and applications to the most common categories, such as topological spaces, fuzzy topological spaces, groups, and abelian groups. The main aim of the theory is to develop a categorical characterization of the classical basic concepts in topology via the newly introduced concept of categorical closure operators. This permits many topological ideas to be introduced in a topology-free environment and imported afterwards into a new category, which often yields interesting new insights into its structure. The first part of the book deals with the general theory, starting with basic definitions and gradually moving to more advanced properties. The second part includes applications to the classical concepts of epimorphisms, separation, compactness and connectedness. Every chapter ends with exercises. A comprehensive list of references for the reader who wants to consult original works and a good index complete the book. "Categorical Closure Operators" is self-contained and can be considered as a graduate level text for topics courses in category theory, algebra, and topology. The book appeals mainly to graduate students and researchers in category theory and categorical topology, and to those interested in categorical methods applied to the most common concrete categories. The reader is expected to have some basic knowledge of algebra, topology and category theory; however, all recurrent categorical concepts are included in a preliminary chapter.

Kummer's work on cyclotomic fields paved the way for the development of algebraic number theory in general by Dedekind, Weber, Hensel, Hilbert, Takagi, Artin and others. However, the success of this general theory has tended to obscure special facts proved by Kummer about cyclotomic fields which lie deeper than the general theory. For a long period in the 20th century this aspect of Kummer's work seems to have been largely forgotten, except for a few papers, among which are those by Pollaczek [Po], Artin-Hasse [A-H] and Vandiver [Va]. In the mid 1950's, the theory of cyclotomic fields was taken up again by Iwasawa and Leopoldt. Iwasawa viewed cyclotomic fields as being analogues for number fields of the constant field extensions of algebraic geometry, and wrote a great sequence of papers investigating towers of cyclotomic fields, and more generally, Galois extensions of number fields whose Galois group is isomorphic to the additive group of p-adic integers. Leopoldt concentrated on a fixed cyclotomic field, and established various p-adic analogues of the classical complex analytic class number formulas. In particular, this led him to introduce, with Kubota, p-adic analogues of the complex L-functions attached to cyclotomic extensions of the rationals. Finally, in the late 1960's, Iwasawa [Iw 11] made the fundamental discovery that there was a close connection between his work on towers of cyclotomic fields and these p-adic L-functions of Leopoldt - Kubota.

This volume is devoted to the development of an algebraic model of databases. The first chapter presents a general introduction. The following sixteen chapters are divided into three main parts. Part I deals with various aspects of universal algebra. The chapters of Part I discuss topics such as sets, algebras and models, fundamental structures, categories, the category of sets, topoi, fuzzy sets, varieties of algebras, axiomatic classes, category algebra and algebraic theories. Part II deals with different approaches to the algebraization of predicate calculus. This material is intended to be applied chiefly to databases, although some discussion of pure algebraic applications is also given. Discussed here are topics such as Boolean algebras and propositional calculus, Halmos algebras and predicate calculus, connections with model theory, and the categorial approach to algebraic logic. Part III is concerned specifically with the algebraic model of databases, which considers the database as an algebraic structure. Topics dealt with in this part are the algebraic aspects of databases, their equivalence and restructuring, symmetries and the Galois theory of databases, and constructions in database theory. The volume closes with a discussion and conclusions, and an extensive bibliography. For mathematicians, computer scientists and database engineers, with an interest in applications of algebra and logic.

This is the first monograph on rings closed to von Neumann regular rings. The following classes of rings are considered: exchange rings, pi-regular rings, weakly regular rings, rings with comparability, V-rings, and max rings. Every Artinian or von Neumann regular ring A is an exchange ring (this means that for every one of its elements a, there exists an idempotent e of A such that aA contains eA and (1-a)A contains (1-e)A). Exchange rings are very useful in the study of direct decompositions of modules, and have many applications to theory of Banach algebras, ring theory, and K-theory. In particular, exchange rings and rings with comparability provide a key to a number of outstanding cancellation problems for finitely generated projective modules. Every von Neumann regular ring is a weakly regular pi-regular ring (a ring A is pi-regular if for every one of its elements a, there is a positive integer n such that a is contained in aAa) and every Artinian ring is a pi-regular max ring (a ring is a max ring if every one of its nonzero modules has a maximal submodule). Thus many results on finite-dimensional algebras and regular rings are extended to essentially larger classes of rings. Starting from a basic understanding of ring theory, the theory of rings close to regular is presented and accompanied with complete proofs.

The book will appeal to readers from beginners to researchers and specialists in algebra; it concludes with an extensive bibliography.

This book contains nineteen papers from among the twenty-five papers presented at the Second International Conference on Fibonacci Numbers and Their Applications. These papers have been selected after a careful review by well known referee's in the field, and they range from elementary number theory to probability and statistics. The Fibonacci numbers are their unifying bond. It is anticipated that this book will be useful to research workers and graduate students interested in the Fibonacci numbers and their applications. October 1987 The Editors Gerald E. Bergum South Dakota State University Brookings, South Dakota, U.S.A. Andreas N. Philippou University of Patras Patras, Greece Alwyn F. Horadam University of New England Armidale, N.S.W., Australia xiii THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEES LOCAL COMMITTEE INTERN A TIONAL COMMITTEE Bergum, G., Chairman Philippou, A. (Greece), Chairman Edgar, H., Co-chalrman Horadam, A. (Australia), Co-chalrman Bergum, G. (U.s.A.) Thoro, D. Kiss, P. (Hungary) Johnson, M. Long, C. (U.S.A.) Lange, L.

This book presents advances in matrix and tensor data processing in the domain of signal, image and information processing. The theoretical mathematical approaches are discusses in the context of potential applications in sensor and cognitive systems engineering.
The topics and application include Information Geometry, Differential Geometry of structured Matrix, Positive Definite Matrix, Covariance Matrix, Sensors (Electromagnetic Fields, Acoustic sensors) and Applications in Cognitive systems, in particular Data Mining."

This book focuses on problems at the interplay between the theory of partitions and optimal transport with a view toward applications. Topics covered include problems related to stable marriages and stable partitions, multipartitions, optimal transport for measures and optimal partitions, and finally cooperative and noncooperative partitions. All concepts presented are illustrated by examples from game theory, economics, and learning.

The book offers an original view on channel coding, based on a unitary approach to block and convolutional codes for error correction. It presents both new concepts and new families of codes. For example, lengthened and modified lengthened cyclic codes are introduced as a bridge towards time-invariant convolutional codes and their extension to time-varying versions. The novel families of codes include turbo codes and low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, the features of which are justified from the structural properties of the component codes. Design procedures for regular LDPC codes are proposed, supported by the presented theory. Quasi-cyclic LDPC codes, in block or convolutional form, represent one of the most original contributions of the book. The use of more than 100 examples allows the reader gradually to gain an understanding of the theory, and the provision of a list of more than 150 definitions, indexed at the end of the book, permits rapid location of sought information.

From the reviews of the first edition:

"It is certainly no exaggeration to say that A Singular Introduction to Commutative Algebra aims to lead a further stage in the computational revolution in commutative algebra . Among the great strengths and most distinctive features is a new, completely unified treatment of the global and local theories. making it one of the most flexible and most efficient systems of its type....another strength of Greuel and Pfister's book is its breadth of coverage of theoretical topics in the portions of commutative algebra closest to algebraic geometry, with algorithmic treatments of almost every topic....Greuel and Pfister have written a distinctive and highly useful book that should be in the library of every commutative algebraist and algebraic geometer, expert and novice alike."

J.B. Little, MAA, March 2004

The second edition is substantially enlarged by a chapter on Groebner bases in non-commtative rings, a chapter on characteristic and triangular sets with applications to primary decomposition and polynomial solving and an appendix on polynomial factorization including factorization over algebraic field extensions and absolute factorization, in the uni- and multivariate case."

Traditionally a subject of number theory, continued fractions appear in dynamical systems, algebraic geometry, topology, and even celestial mechanics. The rise of computational geometry has resulted in renewed interest in multidimensional generalizations of continued fractions. Numerous classical theorems have been extended to the multidimensional case, casting light on phenomena in diverse areas of mathematics. This book introduces a new geometric vision of continued fractions. It covers several applications to questions related to such areas as Diophantine approximation, algebraic number theory, and toric geometry. The reader will find an overview of current progress in the geometric theory of multidimensional continued fractions accompanied by currently open problems. Whenever possible, we illustrate geometric constructions with figures and examples. Each chapter has exercises useful for undergraduate or graduate courses.

ThesubjectofthisbookisSemi-In?niteAlgebra,ormorespeci?cally,Semi-In?nite Homological Algebra. The term "semi-in?nite" is loosely associated with objects that can be viewed as extending in both a "positive" and a "negative" direction, withsomenaturalpositioninbetween,perhapsde?nedupto a"?nite"movement. Geometrically, this would mean an in?nite-dimensional variety with a natural class of "semi-in?nite" cycles or subvarieties, having always a ?nite codimension in each other, but in?nite dimension and codimension in the whole variety [37]. (For further instances of semi-in?nite mathematics see, e. g. , [38] and [57], and references below. ) Examples of algebraic objects of the semi-in?nite type range from certain in?nite-dimensional Lie algebras to locally compact totally disconnected topolo- cal groups to ind-schemes of ind-in?nite type to discrete valuation ?elds. From an abstract point of view, these are ind-pro-objects in various categories, often - dowed with additional structures. One contribution we make in this monograph is the demonstration of another class of algebraic objects that should be thought of as "semi-in?nite", even though they do not at ?rst glance look quite similar to the ones in the above list. These are semialgebras over coalgebras, or more generally over corings - the associative algebraic structures of semi-in?nite nature. The subject lies on the border of Homological Algebra with Representation Theory, and the introduction of semialgebras into it provides an additional link with the theory of corings [23], as the semialgebrasare the natural objects dual to corings.