The Mathieu groups have many fascinating and unusual characteristics and have been studied at length since their discovery. This book provides a unique, geometric perspective on these groups. The amalgam method is explained and used to construct M24, enabling readers to learn the method through its application to a familiar example. The same method is then used to construct, among others, the octad graph, the Witt design and the Golay code. This book also provides a systematic account of 'small groups', and serves as a useful reference for the Mathieu groups. The material is presented in such a way that it guides the reader smoothly and intuitively through the process, leading to a deeper understanding of the topic.

Permutation groups, their fundamental theory and applications are discussed in this introductory book. It focuses on those groups that are most useful for studying symmetric structures such as graphs, codes and designs. Modern treatments of the O'Nan-Scott theory are presented not only for primitive permutation groups but also for the larger families of quasiprimitive and innately transitive groups, including several classes of infinite permutation groups. Their precision is sharpened by the introduction of a cartesian decomposition concept. This facilitates reduction arguments for primitive groups analogous to those, using orbits and partitions, that reduce problems about general permutation groups to primitive groups. The results are particularly powerful for finite groups, where the finite simple group classification is invoked. Applications are given in algebra and combinatorics to group actions that preserve cartesian product structures. Students and researchers with an interest in mathematical symmetry will find the book enjoyable and useful.

This monograph adopts an operational and functional analytic approach to the following problem: given a short exact sequence (group extension) 1 N G H 1 of finite groups, describe the irreducible representations of G by means of the structure of the group extension. This problem has attracted many mathematicians, including I. Schur, A.H. Clifford, and G. Mackey and, more recently, M. Isaacs, B. Huppert, Y.G. Berkovich & E.M. Zhmud, and J.M.G. Fell & R.S. Doran.The main topics are, on the one hand, Clifford Theory and the Little Group Method (of Mackey and Wigner) for induced representations, and, on the other hand, Kirillov's Orbit Method (for step-2 nilpotent groups of odd order) which establishes a natural and powerful correspondence between Lie rings and nilpotent groups. As an application, a detailed description is given of the representation theory of the alternating groups, of metacyclic, quaternionic, dihedral groups, and of the (finite) Heisenberg group. The Little Group Method may be applied if and only if a suitable unitary 2-cocycle (the Mackey obstruction) is trivial. To overcome this obstacle, (unitary) projective representations are introduced and corresponding Mackey and Clifford theories are developed. The commutant of an induced representation and the relative Hecke algebra is also examined. Finally, there is a comprehensive exposition of the theory of projective representations for finite Abelian groups which is applied to obtain a complete description of the irreducible representations of finite metabelian groups of odd order.

This collection of expository articles by a range of established experts and newer researchers provides an overview of the recent developments in the theory of locally compact groups. It includes introductory articles on totally disconnected locally compact groups, profinite groups, p-adic Lie groups and the metric geometry of locally compact groups. Concrete examples, including groups acting on trees and Neretin groups, are discussed in detail. An outline of the emerging structure theory of locally compact groups beyond the connected case is presented through three complementary approaches: Willis' theory of the scale function, global decompositions by means of subnormal series, and the local approach relying on the structure lattice. An introduction to lattices, invariant random subgroups and L2-invariants, and a brief account of the Burger-Mozes construction of simple lattices are also included. A final chapter collects various problems suggesting future research directions.

by a more general quadratic algebra (possibly obtained by deformation) and then to derive Rq G] by requiring it to possess the latter as a comodule. A third principle is to focus attention on the tensor structure of the cat egory of ( ; modules. This means of course just defining an algebra structure on Rq G]; but this is to be done in a very specific manner. Concretely the category is required to be braided and this forces (9.4.2) the existence of an "R-matrix" satisfying in particular the quantum Yang-Baxter equation and from which the algebra structure of Rq G] can be written down (9.4.5). Finally there was a search for a perfectly self-dual model for Rq G] which would then be isomorphic to Uq(g). Apparently this failed; but V. G. Drinfeld found that it could be essentially made to work for the "Borel part" of Uq(g) denoted U (b) and further found a general construction (the Drinfeld double) q mirroring a Lie bialgebra. This gives Uq(g) up to passage to a quotient. One of the most remarkable aspects of the above superficially different ap proaches is their extraordinary intercoherence. In particular they essentially all lead for G semisimple to the same and hence "canonical," objects Rq G] and Uq(g), though this epithet may as yet be premature."

This book provides a detailed exposition of a wide range of topics in geometric group theory, inspired by Gromov's pivotal work in the 1980s. It includes classical theorems on nilpotent groups and solvable groups, a fundamental study of the growth of groups, a detailed look at asymptotic cones, and a discussion of related subjects including filters and ultrafilters, dimension theory, hyperbolic geometry, amenability, the Burnside problem, and random walks on groups. The results are unified under the common theme of Gromov's theorem, namely that finitely generated groups of polynomial growth are virtually nilpotent. This beautiful result gave birth to a fascinating new area of research which is still active today.The purpose of the book is to collect these naturally related results together in one place, most of which are scattered throughout the literature, some of them appearing here in book form for the first time. In this way, the connections between these topics are revealed, providing a pleasant introduction to geometric group theory based on ideas surrounding Gromov's theorem. The book will be of interest to mature undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics who are familiar with basic group theory and topology, and who wish to learn more about geometric, analytic, and probabilistic aspects of infinite groups.

This volume provides state-of-the-art accounts of exciting recent developments in the rapidly-expanding fields of geometric and cohomological group theory. The research articles and surveys collected here demonstrate connections to such diverse areas as geometric and low-dimensional topology, analysis, homological algebra and logic. Topics include various constructions of Thompson-like groups, Wise's theory of special cube complexes, groups with exotic homological properties, the Farrell-Jones assembly conjectures and new applications of Garside structures. Its mixture of surveys and research makes this book an excellent entry point for young researchers as well as a useful reference work for experts in the field. This is the proceedings of the 100th meeting of the London Mathematical Society series of Durham Symposia.

Algebraic groups play much the same role for algebraists as Lie groups play for analysts. This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the theory of algebraic group schemes over fields that includes the structure theory of semisimple algebraic groups, and is written in the language of modern algebraic geometry. The first eight chapters study general algebraic group schemes over a field and culminate in a proof of the Barsotti-Chevalley theorem, realizing every algebraic group as an extension of an abelian variety by an affine group. After a review of the Tannakian philosophy, the author provides short accounts of Lie algebras and finite group schemes. The later chapters treat reductive algebraic groups over arbitrary fields, including the Borel-Chevalley structure theory. Solvable algebraic groups are studied in detail. Prerequisites have also been kept to a minimum so that the book is accessible to non-specialists in algebraic geometry.

An accessible and panoramic account of the theory of random walks on groups and graphs, stressing the strong connections of the theory with other branches of mathematics, including geometric and combinatorial group theory, potential analysis, and theoretical computer science. This volume brings together original surveys and research-expository papers from renowned and leading experts, many of whom spoke at the workshop 'Groups, Graphs and Random Walks' celebrating the sixtieth birthday of Wolfgang Woess in Cortona, Italy. Topics include: growth and amenability of groups; Schroedinger operators and symbolic dynamics; ergodic theorems; Thompson's group F; Poisson boundaries; probability theory on buildings and groups of Lie type; structure trees for edge cuts in networks; and mathematical crystallography. In what is currently a fast-growing area of mathematics, this book provides an up-to-date and valuable reference for both researchers and graduate students, from which future research activities will undoubtedly stem.

This book gathers peer-reviewed contributions representing modern trends in the theory of generalized functions and pseudo-differential operators. It is dedicated to Professor Michael Oberguggenberger (Innsbruck University, Austria) in honour of his 60th birthday. The topics covered were suggested by the ISAAC Group in Generalized Functions (GF) and the ISAAC Group in Pseudo-Differential Operators (IGPDO), which met at the 9th ISAAC congress in Krakow, Poland in August 2013. Topics include Columbeau algebras, ultra-distributions, partial differential equations, micro-local analysis, harmonic analysis, global analysis, geometry, quantization, mathematical physics, and time-frequency analysis. Featuring both essays and research articles, the book will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers working in analysis, PDE and mathematical physics, while also offering a valuable complement to the volumes on this topic previously published in the OT series.

Fascinating connections exist between group theory and automata theory, and a wide variety of them are discussed in this text. Automata can be used in group theory to encode complexity, to represent aspects of underlying geometry on a space on which a group acts, and to provide efficient algorithms for practical computation. There are also many applications in geometric group theory. The authors provide background material in each of these related areas, as well as exploring the connections along a number of strands that lead to the forefront of current research in geometric group theory. Examples studied in detail include hyperbolic groups, Euclidean groups, braid groups, Coxeter groups, Artin groups, and automata groups such as the Grigorchuk group. This book will be a convenient reference point for established mathematicians who need to understand background material for applications, and can serve as a textbook for research students in (geometric) group theory.

This monograph on the applications of cube complexes constitutes a breakthrough in the fields of geometric group theory and 3-manifold topology. Many fundamental new ideas and methodologies are presented here for the first time, including a cubical small-cancellation theory that generalizes ideas from the 1960s, a version of Dehn Filling that functions in the category of special cube complexes, and a variety of results about right-angled Artin groups. The book culminates by establishing a remarkable theorem about the nature of hyperbolic groups that are constructible as amalgams. The applications described here include the virtual fibering of cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds and the resolution of Baumslag's conjecture on the residual finiteness of one-relator groups with torsion. Most importantly, this work establishes a cubical program for resolving Thurston's conjectures on hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and validates this program in significant cases. Illustrated with more than 150 color figures, this book will interest graduate students and researchers working in geometry, algebra, and topology.

This volume presents a completely self-contained introduction to the elaborate theory of locally compact quantum groups, bringing the reader to the frontiers of present-day research. The exposition includes a substantial amount of material on functional analysis and operator algebras, subjects which in themselves have become increasingly important with the advent of quantum information theory. In particular, the rather unfamiliar modular theory of weights plays a crucial role in the theory, due to the presence of 'Haar integrals' on locally compact quantum groups, and is thus treated quite extensively The topics covered are developed independently, and each can serve either as a separate course in its own right or as part of a broader course on locally compact quantum groups. The second part of the book covers crossed products of coactions, their relation to subfactors and other types of natural products such as cocycle bicrossed products, quantum doubles and doublecrossed products. Induced corepresentations, Galois objects and deformations of coactions by cocycles are also treated. Each section is followed by a generous supply of exercises. To complete the book, an appendix is provided on topology, measure theory and complex function theory.

Stochastic systems provide powerful abstract models for a variety of important real-life applications: for example, power supply, traffic flow, data transmission. They (and the real systems they model) are often subject to phase transitions, behaving in one way when a parameter is below a certain critical value, then switching behaviour as soon as that critical value is reached. In a real system, we do not necessarily have control over all the parameter values, so it is important to know how to find critical points and to understand system behaviour near these points. This book is a modern presentation of the 'semimartingale' or 'Lyapunov function' method applied to near-critical stochastic systems, exemplified by non-homogeneous random walks. Applications treat near-critical stochastic systems and range across modern probability theory from stochastic billiards models to interacting particle systems. Spatially non-homogeneous random walks are explored in depth, as they provide prototypical near-critical systems.

Questions about modular representation theory of finite groups can often be reduced to elementary abelian subgroups. This is the first book to offer a detailed study of the representation theory of elementary abelian groups, bringing together information from many papers and journals, as well as unpublished research. Special attention is given to recent work on modules of constant Jordan type, and the methods involve producing and examining vector bundles on projective space and their Chern classes. Extensive background material is provided, which will help the reader to understand vector bundles and their Chern classes from an algebraic point of view, and to apply this to modular representation theory of elementary abelian groups. The final section, addressing problems and directions for future research, will also help to stimulate further developments in the subject. With no similar books on the market, this will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers working in representation theory.

This book, intended for postgraduate students and researchers, presents many results of historical importance on pseudocompact spaces. In 1948, E. Hewitt introduced the concept of pseudocompactness which generalizes a property of compact subsets of the real line. A topological space is pseudocompact if the range of any real-valued, continuous function defined on the space is a bounded subset of the real line. Pseudocompact spaces constitute a natural and fundamental class of objects in General Topology and research into their properties has important repercussions in diverse branches of Mathematics, such as Functional Analysis, Dynamical Systems, Set Theory and Topological-Algebraic structures. The collection of authors of this volume include pioneers in their fields who have written a comprehensive explanation on this subject. In addition, the text examines new lines of research that have been at the forefront of mathematics. There is, as yet, no text that systematically compiles and develops the extensive theory of pseudocompact spaces, making this book an essential asset for anyone in the field of topology.

This book explains techniques that are essential in almost all branches of modern geometry such as algebraic geometry, complex geometry, or non-archimedian geometry. It uses the most accessible case, real and complex manifolds, as a model. The author especially emphasizes the difference between local and global questions. Cohomology theory of sheaves is introduced and its usage is illustrated by many examples.

One of the best-written, most skillful expositions of group theory and its physical applications, directed primarily to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics, especially quantum physics. With problems. "Well-organized, well-written and very clear throughout" - MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS. 71 illustrations.

Fourier analysis aims to decompose functions into a superposition of simple trigonometric functions, whose special features can be exploited to isolate specific components into manageable clusters before reassembling the pieces. This two-volume text presents a largely self-contained treatment, comprising not just the major theoretical aspects (Part I) but also exploring links to other areas of mathematics and applications to science and technology (Part II). Following the historical and conceptual genesis, this book (Part I) provides overviews of basic measure theory and functional analysis, with added insight into complex analysis and the theory of distributions. The material is intended for both beginning and advanced graduate students with a thorough knowledge of advanced calculus and linear algebra. Historical notes are provided and topics are illustrated at every stage by examples and exercises, with separate hints and solutions, thus making the exposition useful both as a course textbook and for individual study.

This study of graded rings includes the first systematic account of the graded Grothendieck group, a powerful and crucial invariant in algebra which has recently been adopted to classify the Leavitt path algebras. The book begins with a concise introduction to the theory of graded rings and then focuses in more detail on Grothendieck groups, Morita theory, Picard groups and K-theory. The author extends known results in the ungraded case to the graded setting and gathers together important results which are currently scattered throughout the literature. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in ring theory.

In this well-written presentation, motivated by numerous examples and problems, the authors introduce the basic theory of braid groups, highlighting several definitions that show their equivalence; this is followed by a treatment of the relationship between braids, knots and links. Important results then treat the linearity and orderability of the subject. Relevant additional material is included in five large appendices.

Braid Groups will serve graduate students and a number of mathematicians coming from diverse disciplines.

A classical theorem of Jordan states that every finite transitive permutation group contains a derangement. This existence result has interesting and unexpected applications in many areas of mathematics, including graph theory, number theory and topology. Various generalisations have been studied in more recent years, with a particular focus on the existence of derangements with special properties. Written for academic researchers and postgraduate students working in related areas of algebra, this introduction to the finite classical groups features a comprehensive account of the conjugacy and geometry of elements of prime order. The development is tailored towards the study of derangements in finite primitive classical groups; the basic problem is to determine when such a group G contains a derangement of prime order r, for each prime divisor r of the degree of G. This involves a detailed analysis of the conjugacy classes and subgroup structure of the finite classical groups.

Providing a nearly complete selection of up-to-date methods and results on block invariants with respect to their defect groups, this book covers the classical theory pioneered by Brauer, the modern theory of fusion systems introduced by Puig, the geometry of numbers developed by Minkowski, the classification of finite simple groups, and various computer assisted methods. In a powerful combination, these tools are applied to solve many special cases of famous open conjectures in the representation theory of finite groups. Most of the material is drawn from peer-reviewed journal articles, but there are also new previously unpublished results. In order to make the text self-contained, detailed proofs are given whenever possible. Several tables add to the text's usefulness as a reference. The book is aimed at experts in group theory or representation theory who may wish to make use of the presented ideas in their research.

Pseudo-reductive groups arise naturally in the study of general smooth linear algebraic groups over non-perfect fields and have many important applications. This monograph provides a comprehensive treatment of the theory of pseudo-reductive groups and gives their classification in a usable form. In this second edition there is new material on relative root systems and Tits systems for general smooth affine groups, including the extension to quasi-reductive groups of famous simplicity results of Tits in the semisimple case. Chapter 9 has been completely rewritten to describe and classify pseudo-split absolutely pseudo-simple groups with a non-reduced root system over arbitrary fields of characteristic 2 via the useful new notion of 'minimal type' for pseudo-reductive groups. Researchers and graduate students working in related areas, such as algebraic geometry, algebraic group theory, or number theory will value this book, as it develops tools likely to be used in tackling other problems.

Originally published in 1946 as number thirty-nine in the Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics series, this book provides a concise account regarding linear groups. Appendices are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in linear groups and the history of mathematics.