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.

Dating back to work of Berthelot, rigid cohomology appeared as a common generalization of Monsky-Washnitzer cohomology and crystalline cohomology. It is a p-adic Weil cohomology suitable for computing Zeta and L-functions for algebraic varieties on finite fields. Moreover, it is effective, in the sense that it gives algorithms to compute the number of rational points of such varieties. This is the first book to give a complete treatment of the theory, from full discussion of all the basics to descriptions of the very latest developments. Results and proofs are included that are not available elsewhere, local computations are explained, and many worked examples are given. This accessible tract will be of interest to researchers working in arithmetic geometry, p-adic cohomology theory, and related cryptographic areas.

The history of the development of Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and relativistic ideas of the shape of the universe, is presented in this lively account by Jeremy Gray. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry occupies a unique position in the history of mathematics. In this book, Jeremy Gray reviews the failure of classical attempts to prove the postulate and then proceeds to show how the work of Gauss, Lobachevskii, and Bolyai, laid the foundations of modern differential geometry, by constructing geometries in which the parallel postulate fails. These investigations in turn enabled the formulation of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, which today form the basis of our conception of the universe. The author has made every attempt to keep the pre-requisites to a bare minimum. This immensely readable account, contains historical and mathematical material which make it suitable for undergraduate students in the history of science and mathematics. For the second edition, the author has taken the opportunity to update much of the material, and to add a chapter on the emerging story of the Arabic contribution to this fascinating aspect of the history of mathematics.

This book studies the large deviations for empirical measures and vector-valued additive functionals of Markov chains with general state space. Under suitable recurrence conditions, the ergodic theorem for additive functionals of a Markov chain asserts the almost sure convergence of the averages of a real or vector-valued function of the chain to the mean of the function with respect to the invariant distribution. In the case of empirical measures, the ergodic theorem states the almost sure convergence in a suitable sense to the invariant distribution. The large deviation theorems provide precise asymptotic estimates at logarithmic level of the probabilities of deviating from the preponderant behavior asserted by the ergodic theorems.

Homogeneous spaces of linear algebraic groups lie at the crossroads of algebraic geometry, theory of algebraic groups, classical projective and enumerative geometry, harmonic analysis, and representation theory. By standard reasons of algebraic geometry, in order to solve various problems on a homogeneous space, it is natural and helpful to compactify it while keeping track of the group action, i.e., to consider equivariant completions or, more generally, open embeddings of a given homogeneous space. Such equivariant embeddings are the subject of this book. We focus on the classification of equivariant embeddings in terms of certain data of "combinatorial" nature (the Luna-Vust theory) and description of various geometric and representation-theoretic properties of these varieties based on these data. The class of spherical varieties, intensively studied during the last three decades, is of special interest in the scope of this book. Spherical varieties include many classical examples, such as Grassmannians, flag varieties, and varieties of quadrics, as well as well-known toric varieties. We have attempted to cover most of the important issues, including the recent substantial progress obtained in and around the theory of spherical varieties.

This book is a collection of articles from several world-class researchers, and is inspired by Sir Roger Penrose's work. It gives an overview of the interaction between geometry and physics, from which many important developments have emerged. The volume collects together ideas from across the physical sciences, and indicates the many applications of geometrical ideas and techniques across mathematics and mathematical physics.

I1 More than one hundred years ago, Georg Frobenius [26] proved his remarkable theorem a?rming that, for a primep and a ?nite groupG, if the quotient of the normalizer by the centralizer of anyp-subgroup ofG is a p-group then, up to a normal subgroup of order prime top,G is ap-group. Ofcourse,itwouldbeananachronismtopretendthatFrobenius,when doing this theorem, was thinking the category - notedF in the sequel - G where the objects are thep-subgroups ofG and the morphisms are the group homomorphisms between them which are induced by theG-conjugation. Yet Frobenius' hypothesis is truly meaningful in this category. I2 Fifty years ago, John Thompson [57] built his seminal proof of the nilpotencyoftheso-called Frobeniuskernelofa FrobeniusgroupGwithar- ments - at that time completely new - which might be rewritten in terms ofF; indeed, some time later, following these kind of arguments, George G Glauberman [27] proved that, under some - rather strong - hypothesis onG, the normalizerNofasuitablenontrivial p-subgroup ofG controls fusion inG, which amounts to saying that the inclusionN?G induces an ? equivalence of categoriesF =F .

The book is a collection of surveys and original research articles concentrating on new perspectives and research directions at the crossroads of algebraic geometry, topology, and singularity theory. The papers, written by leading researchers working on various topics of the above fields, are the outcome of the "Nemethi60: Geometry and Topology of Singularities" conference held at the Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, from May 27 to 31, 2019. Both the conference and this resulting volume are in honor of Professor Andras Nemethi, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, whose work plays a decisive and influential role in the interactions between the above fields. The book should serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers to deepen the new perspectives, methods, and connections between geometry and topology regarding singularities.

This book collects papers on major topics in fixed point theory and its applications. Each chapter is accompanied by basic notions, mathematical preliminaries and proofs of the main results. The book discusses common fixed point theory, convergence theorems, split variational inclusion problems and fixed point problems for asymptotically nonexpansive semigroups; fixed point property and almost fixed point property in digital spaces, nonexpansive semigroups over CAT( ) spaces, measures of noncompactness, integral equations, the study of fixed points that are zeros of a given function, best proximity point theory, monotone mappings in modular function spaces, fuzzy contractive mappings, ordered hyperbolic metric spaces, generalized contractions in b-metric spaces, multi-tupled fixed points, functional equations in dynamic programming and Picard operators. This book addresses the mathematical community working with methods and tools of nonlinear analysis. It also serves as a reference, source for examples and new approaches associated with fixed point theory and its applications for a wide audience including graduate students and researchers.

Topological data analysis (TDA) has emerged recently as a viable tool for analyzing complex data, and the area has grown substantially both in its methodologies and applicability. Providing a computational and algorithmic foundation for techniques in TDA, this comprehensive, self-contained text introduces students and researchers in mathematics and computer science to the current state of the field. The book features a description of mathematical objects and constructs behind recent advances, the algorithms involved, computational considerations, as well as examples of topological structures or ideas that can be used in applications. It provides a thorough treatment of persistent homology together with various extensions - like zigzag persistence and multiparameter persistence - and their applications to different types of data, like point clouds, triangulations, or graph data. Other important topics covered include discrete Morse theory, the Mapper structure, optimal generating cycles, as well as recent advances in embedding TDA within machine learning frameworks.

This monograph explores the concept of the Brouwer degree and its continuing impact on the development of important areas of nonlinear analysis. The authors define the degree using an analytical approach proposed by Heinz in 1959 and further developed by Mawhin in 2004, linking it to the Kronecker index and employing the language of differential forms. The chapters are organized so that they can be approached in various ways depending on the interests of the reader. Unifying this structure is the central role the Brouwer degree plays in nonlinear analysis, which is illustrated with existence, surjectivity, and fixed point theorems for nonlinear mappings. Special attention is paid to the computation of the degree, as well as to the wide array of applications, such as linking, differential and partial differential equations, difference equations, variational and hemivariational inequalities, game theory, and mechanics. Each chapter features bibliographic and historical notes, and the final chapter examines the full history. Brouwer Degree will serve as an authoritative reference on the topic and will be of interest to professional mathematicians, researchers, and graduate students.

This book is the first self-contained exposition of the fascinating link between dynamical systems and dimension groups. The authors explore the rich interplay between topological properties of dynamical systems and the algebraic structures associated with them, with an emphasis on symbolic systems, particularly substitution systems. It is recommended for anybody with an interest in topological and symbolic dynamics, automata theory or combinatorics on words. Intended to serve as an introduction for graduate students and other newcomers to the field as well as a reference for established researchers, the book includes a thorough account of the background notions as well as detailed exposition - with full proofs - of the major results of the subject. A wealth of examples and exercises, with solutions, serve to build intuition, while the many open problems collected at the end provide jumping-off points for future research.

This book provides a general framework for doing geometric group theory for many non-locally-compact topological transformation groups that arise in mathematical practice, including homeomorphism and diffeomorphism groups of manifolds, isometry groups of separable metric spaces and automorphism groups of countable structures. Using Roe's framework of coarse structures and spaces, the author defines a natural coarse geometric structure on all topological groups. This structure is accessible to investigation, especially in the case of Polish groups, and often has an explicit description, generalising well-known structures in familiar cases including finitely generated discrete groups, compactly generated locally compact groups and Banach spaces. In most cases, the coarse geometric structure is metrisable and may even be refined to a canonical quasimetric structure on the group. The book contains many worked examples and sufficient introductory material to be accessible to beginning graduate students. An appendix outlines several open problems in this young and rich theory.

In 1988, E. Verlinde gave a remarkable conjectural formula for the dimension of conformal blocks over a smooth curve in terms of representations of affine Lie algebras. Verlinde's formula arose from physical considerations, but it attracted further attention from mathematicians when it was realized that the space of conformal blocks admits an interpretation as the space of generalized theta functions. A proof followed through the work of many mathematicians in the 1990s. This book gives an authoritative treatment of all aspects of this theory. It presents a complete proof of the Verlinde formula and full details of the connection with generalized theta functions, including the construction of the relevant moduli spaces and stacks of G-bundles. Featuring numerous exercises of varying difficulty, guides to the wider literature and short appendices on essential concepts, it will be of interest to senior graduate students and researchers in geometry, representation theory and theoretical physics.

This book is the first systematic treatment of this area so far scattered in a vast number of articles. As in classical topology, concrete problems require restricting the (generalized point-free) spaces by various conditions playing the roles of classical separation axioms. These are typically formulated in the language of points; but in the point-free context one has either suitable translations, parallels, or satisfactory replacements. The interrelations of separation type conditions, their merits, advantages and disadvantages, and consequences are discussed. Highlights of the book include a treatment of the merits and consequences of subfitness, various approaches to the Hausdorff's axiom, and normality type axioms. Global treatment of the separation conditions put them in a new perspective, and, a.o., gave some of them unexpected importance. The text contains a lot of quite recent results; the reader will see the directions the area is taking, and may find inspiration for her/his further work. The book will be of use for researchers already active in the area, but also for those interested in this growing field (sometimes even penetrating into some parts of theoretical computer science), for graduate and PhD students, and others. For the reader's convenience, the text is supplemented with an Appendix containing necessary background on posets, frames and locales.

This book covers analysis on fractals, a developing area of mathematics that focuses on the dynamical aspects of fractals, such as heat diffusion on fractals and the vibration of a material with fractal structure. The book provides a self-contained introduction to the subject, starting from the basic geometry of self-similar sets and going on to discuss recent results, including the properties of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the Laplacians, and the asymptotical behaviors of heat kernels on self-similar sets. Requiring only a basic knowledge of advanced analysis, general topology and measure theory, this book will be of value to graduate students and researchers in analysis and probability theory. It will also be useful as a supplementary text for graduate courses covering fractals.

Written in an accessible and informal style, this textbook is designed to give graduate students an understanding of integrable systems via the study of Riemann surfaces, loop groups, and twistors. The book has its origins in a series of lecture courses given by the authors, all internationally known mathematicians and renowned expositors. The introduction by Nigel Hitchin addresses the meaning of integrability: how do we recognize an integrable system? His own contribution then develops connections with algebraic geometry, and includes an introduction to Riemann surfaces, sheaves, and line bundles.

Factorization algebras are local-to-global objects that play a role in classical and quantum field theory that is similar to the role of sheaves in geometry: they conveniently organize complicated information. Their local structure encompasses examples like associative and vertex algebras; in these examples, their global structure encompasses Hochschild homology and conformal blocks. In this second volume, the authors show how factorization algebras arise from interacting field theories, both classical and quantum, and how they encode essential information such as operator product expansions, Noether currents, and anomalies. Along with a systematic reworking of the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism via derived geometry and factorization algebras, this book offers concrete examples from physics, ranging from angular momentum and Virasoro symmetries to a five-dimensional gauge theory.

Suitable for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers, this self-contained textbook provides an introduction to the mathematics lying at the foundations of bifurcation theory. The theory is built up gradually, beginning with the well-developed approach to singularity theory through right-equivalence. The text proceeds with contact equivalence of map-germs and finally presents the path formulation of bifurcation theory. This formulation, developed partly by the author, is more general and more flexible than the original one dating from the 1980s. A series of appendices discuss standard background material, such as calculus of several variables, existence and uniqueness theorems for ODEs, and some basic material on rings and modules. Based on the author's own teaching experience, the book contains numerous examples and illustrations. The wealth of end-of-chapter problems develop and reinforce understanding of the key ideas and techniques: solutions to a selection are provided.

Since the birth of rational homotopy theory, the possibility of extending the Quillen approach - in terms of Lie algebras - to a more general category of spaces, including the non-simply connected case, has been a challenge for the algebraic topologist community. Despite the clear Eckmann-Hilton duality between Quillen and Sullivan treatments, the simplicity in the realization of algebraic structures in the latter contrasts with the complexity required by the Lie algebra version. In this book, the authors develop new tools to address these problems. Working with complete Lie algebras, they construct, in a combinatorial way, a cosimplicial Lie model for the standard simplices. This is a key object, which allows the definition of a new model and realization functors that turn out to be homotopically equivalent to the classical Quillen functors in the simply connected case. With this, the authors open new avenues for solving old problems and posing new questions. This monograph is the winner of the 2020 Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize, a prestigious award for books of expository nature presenting the latest developments in an active area of research in mathematics.

Everyone knows what braids are, whether they be made of hair, knitting wool, or electrical cables. However, it is not so evident that we can construct a theory about them, i.e. to elaborate a coherent and mathematically interesting corpus of results concerning them. This book demonstrates that there is a resoundingly positive response to this question: braids are fascinating objects, with a variety of rich mathematical properties and potential applications. A special emphasis is placed on the algorithmic aspects and on what can be called the 'calculus of braids', in particular the problem of isotopy. Prerequisites are kept to a minimum, with most results being established from scratch. An appendix at the end of each chapter gives a detailed introduction to the more advanced notions required, including monoids and group presentations. Also included is a range of carefully selected exercises to help the reader test their knowledge, with solutions available.

Everyone knows what braids are, whether they be made of hair, knitting wool, or electrical cables. However, it is not so evident that we can construct a theory about them, i.e. to elaborate a coherent and mathematically interesting corpus of results concerning them. This book demonstrates that there is a resoundingly positive response to this question: braids are fascinating objects, with a variety of rich mathematical properties and potential applications. A special emphasis is placed on the algorithmic aspects and on what can be called the 'calculus of braids', in particular the problem of isotopy. Prerequisites are kept to a minimum, with most results being established from scratch. An appendix at the end of each chapter gives a detailed introduction to the more advanced notions required, including monoids and group presentations. Also included is a range of carefully selected exercises to help the reader test their knowledge, with solutions available.

This book consists of 16 surveys on Thurston's work and its later development. The authors are mathematicians who were strongly influenced by Thurston's publications and ideas. The subjects discussed include, among others, knot theory, the topology of 3-manifolds, circle packings, complex projective structures, hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups, foliations, mapping class groups, Teichmuller theory, anti-de Sitter geometry, and co-Minkowski geometry. The book is addressed to researchers and students who want to learn about Thurston's wide-ranging mathematical ideas and their impact. At the same time, it is a tribute to Thurston, one of the greatest geometers of all time, whose work extended over many fields in mathematics and who had a unique way of perceiving forms and patterns, and of communicating and writing mathematics.

Homological mirror symmetry has its origins in theoretical physics but is now of great interest in mathematics due to the deep connections it reveals between different areas of geometry and algebra. This book offers a self-contained and accessible introduction to the subject via the representation theory of algebras and quivers. It is suitable for graduate students and others without a great deal of background in homological algebra and modern geometry. Each part offers a different perspective on homological mirror symmetry. Part I introduces the A-infinity formalism and offers a glimpse of mirror symmetry using representations of quivers. Part II discusses various A- and B-models in mirror symmetry and their connections through toric and tropical geometry. Part III deals with mirror symmetry for Riemann surfaces. The main mathematical ideas are illustrated by means of simple examples coming mainly from the theory of surfaces, helping the reader connect theory with intuition.

Robert Langlands formulated his celebrated conjectures, initiating the Langlands Program, at the age of 31, profoundly changing the landscape of mathematics. Langlands, recipient of the Abel Prize, is famous for his insight in discovering links among seemingly dissimilar objects, leading to astounding results. This book is uniquely designed to serve a wide range of mathematicians and advanced students, showcasing Langlands' unique creativity and guiding readers through the areas of Langlands' work that are generally regarded as technical and difficult to penetrate. Part 1 features non-technical personal reflections, including Langlands' own words describing how and why he was led to formulate his conjectures. Part 2 includes survey articles of Langlands' early work that led to his conjectures, and centers on his principle of functoriality and foundational work on the Eisenstein series, and is accessible to mathematicians from other fields. Part 3 describes some of Langlands' contributions to mathematical physics.