This volume consists of introductory lectures on the topics in the new and rapidly developing area of toric homotopy theory, and its applications to the current research in configuration spaces and braids, as well as to more applicable mathematics such as fr-codes and robot motion planning.The book starts intertwining homotopy theoretical and combinatorial ideas within the remits of toric topology and illustrates an attempt to classify in a combinatorial way polytopes known as fullerenes, which are important objects in quantum physics, quantum chemistry and nanotechnology. Toric homotopy theory is then introduced as a further development of toric topology, which describes properties of Davis-Januszkiewicz spaces, moment-angle complexes and their generalizations to polyhedral products. The book also displays the current research on configuration spaces, braids, the theory of limits over the category of presentations and the theory of fr-codes. As an application to robotics, the book surveys topological problems relevant to the motion planning problem of robotics and includes new results and constructions, which enrich the emerging area of topological robotics.The book is at research entry level addressing the core components in homotopy theory and their important applications in the sciences and thus suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

This detailed yet accessible text provides an essential introduction to the advanced mathematical methods at the core of theoretical physics. The book steadily develops the key concepts required for an understanding of symmetry principles and topological structures, such as group theory, differentiable manifolds, Riemannian geometry, and Lie algebras. Based on a course for senior undergraduate students of physics, it is written in a clear, pedagogical style and would also be valuable to students in other areas of science and engineering. The material has been subject to more than twenty years of feedback from students, ensuring that explanations and examples are lucid and considered, and numerous worked examples and exercises reinforce key concepts and further strengthen readers' understanding. This text unites a wide variety of important topics that are often scattered across different books, and provides a solid platform for more specialized study or research.

This book is about new topological invariants of real- and angle-valued maps inspired by Morse-Novikov theory, a chapter of topology, which has recently raised interest outside of mathematics; for example, in data analysis, shape recognition, computer science and physics. They are the backbone of what the author proposes as a computational alternative to Morse-Novikov theory, referred to in this book as AMN-theory.These invariants are on one side analogues of rest points, instantons and closed trajectories of vector fields and on the other side, refine basic topological invariants like homology and monodromy. They are associated to tame maps, considerably more general than Morse maps, that are defined on spaces which are considerably more general than manifolds. They are computable by computer implementable algorithms and have strong robustness properties. They relate the dynamics of flows that admit the map as 'Lyapunov map' to the topology of the underlying space, in a similar manner as Morse-Novikov theory does.

Based on the author's course for first-year graduate students this well-written text explains how the tools of algebraic geometry and of number theory can be applied to a study of curves. The book starts by introducing the essential background material and includes 600 exercises.

The Symbolic Universe considers the ways in which many leading mathematicians between 1890 and 1930 attempted to apply geometry to physics. It concentrates on responses to Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, but also considers the philosophical implications of these ideas.

The Geometric Theory of Foliations is one of the fields in Mathematics that gathers several distinct domains: Topology, Dynamical Systems, Differential Topology and Geometry, among others. Its great development has allowed a better comprehension of several phenomena of mathematical and physical nature. Our book contains material dating from the origins of the theory of foliations, from the original works of C Ehresmann and G Reeb, up till modern developments.In a suitable choice of topics we are able to cover material in a coherent way bringing the reader to the heart of recent results in the field. A number of theorems, nowadays considered to be classical, like the Reeb Stability Theorem, Haefliger's Theorem, and Novikov Compact leaf Theorem, are proved in the text. The stability theorem of Thurston and the compact leaf theorem of Plante are also thoroughly proved. Nevertheless, these notes are introductory and cover only a minor part of the basic aspects of the rich theory of foliations.

The theory of function spaces endowed with the topology of point wise convergence, or Cp-theory, exists at the intersection of three important areas of mathematics: topological algebra, functional analysis, and general topology. Cp-theory has an important role in the classification and unification of heterogeneous results from each of these areas of research. Through over 500 carefully selected problems and exercises, this volume provides a self-contained introduction to Cp-theory and general topology. By systematically introducing each of the major topics in Cp-theory, this volume is designed to bring a dedicated reader from basic topological principles to the frontiers of modern research. Key features include: - A unique problem-based introduction to the theory of function spaces. - Detailed solutions to each of the presented problems and exercises. - A comprehensive bibliography reflecting the state-of-the-art in modern Cp-theory. - Numerous open problems and directions for further research. This volume can be used as a textbook for courses in both Cp-theory and general topology as well as a reference guide for specialists studying Cp-theory and related topics. This book also provides numerous topics for PhD specialization as well as a large variety of material suitable for graduate research.

'The book is well written, and there is a welcome breadth in the choice of topics. I think this book is a valuable resource. Students who meticulously work through all the problems in the book in an intelligent way, will surely gain considerable insight into the subject; teachers who donaEURO (TM)t tell their students about it will find it a valuable source for exam questions.'The Mathematical GazetteThe book offers a good introduction to topology through solved exercises. It is mainly intended for undergraduate students. Most exercises are given with detailed solutions.In the second edition, some significant changes have been made, other than the additional exercises. There are also additional proofs (as exercises) of many results in the old section 'What You Need To Know', which has been improved and renamed in the new edition as 'Essential Background'. Indeed, it has been considerably beefed up as it now includes more remarks and results for readers' convenience. The interesting sections 'True or False' and 'Tests' have remained as they were, apart from a very few changes.

This book is intended as an introduction to classical Fourier analysis, Fourier series, and the Fourier transform. The topics are developed slowly for the reader who has never seen them before, with a preference for clarity of exposition in stating and proving results. More recent developments, such as the discrete and fast Fourier transforms and wavelets, are covered in the last two chapters. The first three, short, chapters present requisite background material, and these could be read as a short course in functional analysis. The text includes many historical notes to place the material in a cultural and mathematical context; from the fact that Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier was the nineteenth, but not the last, child in his family to the impact that Fourier series have had on the evolution of the concept of the integral.

Spaces of constant curvature, i.e. Euclidean space, the sphere, and Loba chevskij space, occupy a special place in geometry. They are most accessible to our geometric intuition, making it possible to develop elementary geometry in a way very similar to that used to create the geometry we learned at school. However, since its basic notions can be interpreted in different ways, this geometry can be applied to objects other than the conventional physical space, the original source of our geometric intuition. Euclidean geometry has for a long time been deeply rooted in the human mind. The same is true of spherical geometry, since a sphere can naturally be embedded into a Euclidean space. Lobachevskij geometry, which in the first fifty years after its discovery had been regarded only as a logically feasible by-product appearing in the investigation of the foundations of geometry, has even now, despite the fact that it has found its use in numerous applications, preserved a kind of exotic and even romantic element. This may probably be explained by the permanent cultural and historical impact which the proof of the independence of the Fifth Postulate had on human thought."

'The book is well written, and there is a welcome breadth in the choice of topics. I think this book is a valuable resource. Students who meticulously work through all the problems in the book in an intelligent way, will surely gain considerable insight into the subject; teachers who donaEURO (TM)t tell their students about it will find it a valuable source for exam questions.'The Mathematical GazetteThe book offers a good introduction to topology through solved exercises. It is mainly intended for undergraduate students. Most exercises are given with detailed solutions.In the second edition, some significant changes have been made, other than the additional exercises. There are also additional proofs (as exercises) of many results in the old section 'What You Need To Know', which has been improved and renamed in the new edition as 'Essential Background'. Indeed, it has been considerably beefed up as it now includes more remarks and results for readers' convenience. The interesting sections 'True or False' and 'Tests' have remained as they were, apart from a very few changes.

The techniques and concepts of modern algebra are introduced for their natural role in the study of projectile geometry; groups appear as automorphism groups of configurations, division rings appear in the study of Desargues' theorem and the study of the independence of the seven axioms given for projectile geometry.

The aim of this book is to serve both as an introduction to profinite groups and as a reference for specialists in some areas of the theory. The book is reasonably self-contained. Profinite groups are Galois groups. As such they are of interest in algebraic number theory. Much of recent research on abstract infinite groups is related to profinite groups because residually finite groups are naturally embedded in a profinite group. In addition to basic facts about general profinite groups, the book emphasizes free constructions (particularly free profinite groups and the structure of their subgroups). Homology and cohomology is described with a minimum of prerequisites.

This second edition contains three new appendices dealing with a new characterization of free profinite groups, presentations of pro-p groups and a new conceptually simpler approach to the proof of some classical subgroup theorems. Throughout the text there are additions in the form of new results, improved proofs, typographical corrections, and an enlarged bibliography. The list of open questions has been updated; comments and references have been added about those previously open problems that have been solved after the first edition appeared.

This textbook is an alternative to a classical introductory book in point-set topology. The approach, however, is radically different from the classical one. It is based on convergence rather than on open and closed sets. Convergence of filters is a natural generalization of the basic and well-known concept of convergence of sequences, so that convergence theory is more natural and intuitive to many, perhaps most, students than classical topology. On the other hand, the framework of convergence is easier, more powerful and far-reaching which highlights a need for a theory of convergence in various branches of analysis.Convergence theory for filters is gradually introduced and systematically developed. Topological spaces are presented as a special subclass of convergence spaces of particular interest, but a large part of the material usually developed in a topology textbook is treated in the larger realm of convergence spaces.

This textbook is an alternative to a classical introductory book in point-set topology. The approach, however, is radically different from the classical one. It is based on convergence rather than on open and closed sets. Convergence of filters is a natural generalization of the basic and well-known concept of convergence of sequences, so that convergence theory is more natural and intuitive to many, perhaps most, students than classical topology. On the other hand, the framework of convergence is easier, more powerful and far-reaching which highlights a need for a theory of convergence in various branches of analysis.Convergence theory for filters is gradually introduced and systematically developed. Topological spaces are presented as a special subclass of convergence spaces of particular interest, but a large part of the material usually developed in a topology textbook is treated in the larger realm of convergence spaces.

This book casts the theory of periods of algebraic varieties in the natural setting of Madhav Nori's abelian category of mixed motives. It develops Nori's approach to mixed motives from scratch, thereby filling an important gap in the literature, and then explains the connection of mixed motives to periods, including a detailed account of the theory of period numbers in the sense of Kontsevich-Zagier and their structural properties. Period numbers are central to number theory and algebraic geometry, and also play an important role in other fields such as mathematical physics. There are long-standing conjectures about their transcendence properties, best understood in the language of cohomology of algebraic varieties or, more generally, motives. Readers of this book will discover that Nori's unconditional construction of an abelian category of motives (over fields embeddable into the complex numbers) is particularly well suited for this purpose. Notably, Kontsevich's formal period algebra represents a torsor under the motivic Galois group in Nori's sense, and the period conjecture of Kontsevich and Zagier can be recast in this setting. Periods and Nori Motives is highly informative and will appeal to graduate students interested in algebraic geometry and number theory as well as researchers working in related fields. Containing relevant background material on topics such as singular cohomology, algebraic de Rham cohomology, diagram categories and rigid tensor categories, as well as many interesting examples, the overall presentation of this book is self-contained.

This book is part of the series of three books arise from lectures organized by Hitoshi Murakami at RIMS, Kyoto University in the summer of 2001. The lecture series was aimed at a broad audience that included many graduate students. Its purpose lay in familiarizing the audience with the basics of 3-manifold theory and introducing some topics of current research. The first portion of the lecture series was devoted to standard topics in the theory of 3-manifolds. The middle portion was devoted to a brief study of Heegaard splittings and generalized Heegaard splittings.In the standard schematic diagram for generalized Heegaard splittings, Heegaard splittings are stacked on top of each other in a linear fashion. This can cause confusion in those cases in which generalized Heegaard splittings possess interesting connectivity properties. Fork complexes were invented in an effort to illuminate some of the more subtle issues arising in the study of generalized Heegaard splittings.

The statistical theory of shape is a relatively new topic and is generating a great deal of interest and comment by statisticians, engineers and computer scientists. Mathematically, ‘shape’ is the geometrical information required to describe an object when location, scale and rotational effects are removed. The theory was pioneered by Professor David Kendall to solve practical problems concerning shape. This text presents an elegant account of the theory of shape that has evolved from Kendall’s work. Features include:

• A comprehensive account of Kendall’s shape spaces
• A variety of topological and geometric invariants of these spaces
• Emphasis on the mathematical aspects of shape analysis
• Coverage of the mathematical issues for a wide range of applications

The early chapters provide all the necessary background information, including the history and applications of shape theory. The authors then go on to analyse the topic, in brilliant detail, in a variety of different shape spaces. Kendall’s own procedures for visualising distributions of shapes and shape processes are covered at length. Implications from other branches of mathematics are explored, along with more advanced applications, incorporating statistics and stochastic analysis. Applied statisticians, applied mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists working and researching in the fields of archaeology, astronomy, biology, geography and physical chemistry will find this book of great benefit. The theories presented are used today in a wide range of subjects from archaeology through to physics, and will provide fascinating reading to anyone engaged in such research. Visit our web page! http://www.wiley.com/

This book provides an introduction to the beautiful and deep subject of filling Dehn surfaces in the study of topological 3-manifolds. This book presents, for the first time in English and with all the details, the results from the PhD thesis of the first author, together with some more recent results in the subject. It also presents some key ideas on how these techniques could be used on other subjects.Representing 3-Manifolds by Filling Dehn Surfaces is mostly self-contained requiring only basic knowledge on topology and homotopy theory. The complete and detailed proofs are illustrated with a set of more than 600 spectacular pictures, in the tradition of low-dimensional topology books. It is a basic reference for researchers in the area, but it can also be used as an advanced textbook for graduate students or even for adventurous undergraduates in mathematics. The book uses topological and combinatorial tools developed throughout the twentieth century making the volume a trip along the history of low-dimensional topology.

The study of triangulations of topological spaces has always been at the root of geometric topology. Among the most studied triangulations are piecewise linear triangulations of high-dimensional topological manifolds. Their study culminated in the late 1960s-early 1970s in a complete classification in the work of Kirby and Siebenmann. It is this classification that we discuss in this book, including the celebrated Hauptvermutung and Triangulation Conjecture.The goal of this book is to provide a readable and well-organized exposition of the subject, which would be suitable for advanced graduate students in topology. An exposition like this is currently lacking.

Combinatorics as a branch of mathematics studies the arts of counting. Enumeration occupies the foundation of combinatorics with a large range of applications not only in mathematics itself but also in many other disciplines. It is too broad a task to write a book to show the deep development in every corner from this aspect. This monograph is intended to provide a unified theory for those related to the enumeration of maps. For enumerating maps the first thing we have to know is the sym metry of a map. Or in other words, we have to know its automorphism group. In general, this is an interesting, complicated, and difficult problem. In order to do this, the first problem we meet is how to make a map considered without symmetry. Since the beginning of sixties when Tutte found a way of rooting on a map, the problem has been solved. This forms the basis of the enumerative theory of maps. As soon as the problem without considering the symmetry is solved for one kind of map, the general problem with symmetry can always, in principle, be solved from what we have known about the automorphism of a polyhedron, a synonym for a map, which can be determined efficiently according to another monograph of the present author Liu58]."

The volume is focused on the basic calculation skills of various knot invariants defined from topology and geometry. It presents the detailed Hecke algebra and braid representation to illustrate the original Jones polynomial (rather than the algebraic formal definition many other books and research articles use) and provides self-contained proofs of the Tait conjecture (one of the big achievements from the Jones invariant). It also presents explicit computations to the Casson-Lin invariant via braid representations.With the approach of an explicit computational point of view on knot invariants, this user-friendly volume will benefit readers to easily understand low-dimensional topology from examples and computations, rather than only knowing terminologies and theorems.

The book explains concepts and ideas of mathematics and physics that are relevant for advanced students and researchers of condensed matter physics. With this aim, a brief intuitive introduction to many-body theory is given as a powerful qualitative tool for understanding complex systems. The important emergent concept of a quasiparticle is then introduced as a way to reduce a many-body problem to a single particle quantum problem. Examples of quasiparticles in graphene, superconductors, superfluids and in a topological insulator on a superconductor are discussed.The mathematical idea of self-adjoint extension, which allows short distance information to be included in an effective long distance theory through boundary conditions, is introduced through simple examples and then applied extensively to analyse and predict new physical consequences for graphene.The mathematical discipline of topology is introduced in an intuitive way and is then combined with the methods of differential geometry to show how the emergence of gapless states can be understood. Practical ways of carrying out topological calculations are described.

Many key phenomena in physics and engineering are described as singularities in the solutions to the differential equations describing them. Examples covered thoroughly in this book include the formation of drops and bubbles, the propagation of a crack and the formation of a shock in a gas. Aimed at a broad audience, this book provides the mathematical tools for understanding singularities and explains the many common features in their mathematical structure. Part I introduces the main concepts and techniques, using the most elementary mathematics possible so that it can be followed by readers with only a general background in differential equations. Parts II and III require more specialised methods of partial differential equations, complex analysis and asymptotic techniques. The book may be used for advanced fluid mechanics courses and as a complement to a general course on applied partial differential equations.

The language of -categories provides an insightful new way of expressing many results in higher-dimensional mathematics but can be challenging for the uninitiated. To explain what exactly an -category is requires various technical models, raising the question of how they might be compared. To overcome this, a model-independent approach is desired, so that theorems proven with any model would apply to them all. This text develops the theory of -categories from first principles in a model-independent fashion using the axiomatic framework of an -cosmos, the universe in which -categories live as objects. An -cosmos is a fertile setting for the formal category theory of -categories, and in this way the foundational proofs in -category theory closely resemble the classical foundations of ordinary category theory. Equipped with exercises and appendices with background material, this first introduction is meant for students and researchers who have a strong foundation in classical 1-category theory.