This volume is a collection of articles presented at the Workshop for Nonlinear Analysis held in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, in September 2012. The influence of Bernhard Ruf, to whom this volume is dedicated on the occasion of his 60th birthday, is perceptible throughout the collection by the choice of themes and techniques. The many contributors consider modern topics in the calculus of variations, topological methods and regularity analysis, together with novel applications of partial differential equations. In keeping with the tradition of the workshop, emphasis is given to elliptic operators inserted in different contexts, both theoretical and applied. Topics include semi-linear and fully nonlinear equations and systems with different nonlinearities, at sub- and supercritical exponents, with spectral interactions of Ambrosetti-Prodi type. Also treated are analytic aspects as well as applications such as diffusion problems in mathematical genetics and finance and evolution equations related to electromechanical devices.

This book presents a systematic and comprehensive account of the theory of differentiable manifolds and provides the necessary background for the use of fundamental differential topology tools. The text includes, in particular, the earlier works of Stephen Smale, for which he was awarded the Fields Medal. Explicitly, the topics covered are Thom transversality, Morse theory, theory of handle presentation, h-cobordism theorem and the generalised Poincare conjecture. The material is the outcome of lectures and seminars on various aspects of differentiable manifolds and differential topology given over the years at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, and at other universities throughout India. The book will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in these topics. An elementary knowledge of linear algebra, general topology, multivariate calculus, analysis and algebraic topology is recommended.

This volume presents a multi-dimensional collection of articles highlighting recent developments in commutative algebra. It also includes an extensive bibliography and lists a substantial number of open problems that point to future directions of research in the represented subfields. The contributions cover areas in commutative algebra that have flourished in the last few decades and are not yet well represented in book form. Highlighted topics and research methods include Noetherian and non- Noetherian ring theory as well as integer-valued polynomials and functions. Specific topics include: * Homological dimensions of Prufer-like rings * Quasi complete rings * Total graphs of rings * Properties of prime ideals over various rings * Bases for integer-valued polynomials * Boolean subrings * The portable property of domains * Probabilistic topics in Intn(D) * Closure operations in Zariski-Riemann spaces of valuation domains * Stability of domains * Non-Noetherian grade * Homotopy in integer-valued polynomials * Localizations of global properties of rings * Topics in integral closure * Monoids and submonoids of domains The book includes twenty articles written by many of the most prominent researchers in the field. Most contributions are authored by attendees of the conference in commutative algebra held at the Graz University of Technology in December 2012. There is also a small collection of invited articles authored by those who did not attend the conference. Following the model of the Graz conference, the volume contains a number of comprehensive survey articles along with related research articles featuring recent results that have not yet been published elsewhere.

This volume puts together results touching weak Asplund spaces which are currently spread throughout the literature. All subclasses are discussed, including interferences and counterexamples, with a special emphasis on topological implications. Nonseparable Banach spaces, renorming, and differentiability are stressed throughout. Proofs, many of them new and most of them "considerably better that their traditional counterparts", are presented when necessary. Related open questions conclude each chapter.

This book provides quick access to the theory of Lie groups and isometric actions on smooth manifolds, using a concise geometric approach. After a gentle introduction to the subject, some of its recent applications to active research areas are explored, keeping a constant connection with the basic material. The topics discussed include polar actions, singular Riemannian foliations, cohomogeneity one actions, and positively curved manifolds with many symmetries. This book stems from the experience gathered by the authors in several lectures along the years and was designed to be as self-contained as possible. It is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and young researchers in geometry and can be used for a one-semester course or independent study.

This is a monograph on fixed point theory, covering the purely metric aspects of the theory-particularly results that do not depend on any algebraic structure of the underlying space. Traditionally, a large body of metric fixed point theory has been couched in a functional analytic framework. This aspect of the theory has been written about extensively. There are four classical fixed point theorems against which metric extensions are usually checked. These are, respectively, the Banach contraction mapping principal, Nadler's well known set-valued extension of that theorem, the extension of Banach's theorem to nonexpansive mappings, and Caristi's theorem. These comparisons form a significant component of this book. This book is divided into three parts. Part I contains some aspects of the purely metric theory, especially Caristi's theorem and a few of its many extensions. There is also a discussion of nonexpansive mappings, viewed in the context of logical foundations. Part I also contains certain results in hyperconvex metric spaces and ultrametric spaces. Part II treats fixed point theory in classes of spaces which, in addition to having a metric structure, also have geometric structure. These specifically include the geodesic spaces, length spaces and CAT(0) spaces. Part III focuses on distance spaces that are not necessarily metric. These include certain distance spaces which lie strictly between the class of semimetric spaces and the class of metric spaces, in that they satisfy relaxed versions of the triangle inequality, as well as other spaces whose distance properties do not fully satisfy the metric axioms.

The work consists of two introductory courses, developing different points of view on the study of the asymptotic behaviour of the geodesic flow, namely: the probabilistic approach via martingales and mixing (by Stéphane Le Borgne); the semi-classical approach, by operator theory and resonances (by Frédéric Faure and Masato Tsujii). The contributions aim to give a self-contained introduction to the ideas behind the three different approaches to the investigation of hyperbolic dynamics. The first contribution focus on the convergence towards a Gaussian law of suitably normalized ergodic sums (Central Limit Theorem). The second one deals with Transfer Operators and the structure of their spectrum (Ruelle-Pollicott resonances), explaining the relation with the asymptotics of time correlation function and the periodic orbits of the dynamics.

Visualization research aims to provide insight into large, complicated data sets and the phenomena behind them. While there are di?erent methods of reaching this goal, topological methods stand out for their solid mathem- ical foundation, which guides the algorithmic analysis and its presentation. Topology-based methods in visualization have been around since the beg- ning of visualization as a scienti?c discipline, but they initially played only a minor role. In recent years,interest in topology-basedvisualization has grown andsigni?cantinnovationhasledto newconceptsandsuccessfulapplications. The latest trends adapt basic topological concepts to precisely express user interests in topological properties of the data. This book is the outcome of the second workshop on Topological Methods in Visualization, which was held March 4-6, 2007 in Kloster Nimbschen near Leipzig,Germany.Theworkshopbroughttogethermorethan40international researchers to present and discuss the state of the art and new trends in the ?eld of topology-based visualization. Two inspiring invited talks by George Haller, MIT, and Nelson Max, LLNL, were accompanied by 14 presentations by participants and two panel discussions on current and future trends in visualization research. This book contains thirteen research papers that have been peer-reviewed in a two-stage review process. In the ?rst phase, submitted papers where peer-reviewed by the international program committee. After the workshop accepted papers went through a revision and a second review process taking into account comments from the ?rst round and discussions at the workshop. Abouthalfthepapersconcerntopology-basedanalysisandvisualizationof ?uid?owsimulations;twopapersconcernmoregeneraltopologicalalgorithms, while the remaining papers discuss topology-based visualization methods in application areas like biology, medical imaging and electromagnetism.

Two prisoners are told that they will be brought to a room and seated so that each can see the other. Hats will be placed on their heads; each hat is either red or green. The two prisoners must simultaneously submit a guess of their own hat color, and they both go free if at least one of them guesses correctly. While no communication is allowed once the hats have been placed, they will, however, be allowed to have a strategy session before being brought to the room. Is there a strategy ensuring their release? The answer turns out to be yes, and this is the simplest non-trivial example of a "hat problem." This book deals with the question of how successfully one can predict the value of an arbitrary function at one or more points of its domain based on some knowledge of its values at other points. Topics range from hat problems that are accessible to everyone willing to think hard, to some advanced topics in set theory and infinitary combinatorics. For example, there is a method of predicting the value f(a) of a function f mapping the reals to the reals, based only on knowledge of f's values on the open interval (a - 1, a), and for every such function the prediction is incorrect only on a countable set that is nowhere dense. The monograph progresses from topics requiring fewer prerequisites to those requiring more, with most of the text being accessible to any graduate student in mathematics. The broad range of readership includes researchers, postdocs, and graduate students in the fields of set theory, mathematical logic, and combinatorics. The hope is that this book will bring together mathematicians from different areas to think about set theory via a very broad array of coordinated inference problems.

Combinatorics plays a prominent role in contemporary mathematics, due to the vibrant development it has experienced in the last two decades and its many interactions with other subjects. This book arises from the INdAM conference "CoMeTA 2013 - Combinatorial Methods in Topology and Algebra,'' which was held in Cortona in September 2013. The event brought together emerging and leading researchers at the crossroads of Combinatorics, Topology and Algebra, with a particular focus on new trends in subjects such as: hyperplane arrangements; discrete geometry and combinatorial topology; polytope theory and triangulations of manifolds; combinatorial algebraic geometry and commutative algebra; algebraic combinatorics; and combinatorial representation theory. The book is divided into two parts. The first expands on the topics discussed at the conference by providing additional background and explanations, while the second presents original contributions on new trends in the topics addressed by the conference.

This is the fifth conference in a bi-annual series, following conferences in Besancon, Limoges, Irsee and Toronto. The meeting aims to bring together different strands of research in and closely related to the area of Iwasawa theory. During the week before the conference in a kind of summer school a series of preparatory lectures for young mathematicians was provided as an introduction to Iwasawa theory. Iwasawa theory is a modern and powerful branch of number theory and can be traced back to the Japanese mathematician Kenkichi Iwasawa, who introduced the systematic study of Z_p-extensions and p-adic L-functions, concentrating on the case of ideal class groups. Later this would be generalized to elliptic curves. Over the last few decades considerable progress has been made in automorphic Iwasawa theory, e.g. the proof of the Main Conjecture for GL(2) by Kato and Skinner & Urban. Techniques such as Hida's theory of p-adic modular forms and big Galois representations play a crucial part. Also a noncommutative Iwasawa theory of arbitrary p-adic Lie extensions has been developed. This volume aims to present a snapshot of the state of art of Iwasawa theory as of 2012. In particular it offers an introduction to Iwasawa theory (based on a preparatory course by Chris Wuthrich) and a survey of the proof of Skinner & Urban (based on a lecture course by Xin Wan).

This book contains recent contributions to the fields of rigidity and symmetry with two primary focuses: to present the mathematically rigorous treatment of rigidity of structures and to explore the interaction of geometry, algebra and combinatorics. Contributions present recent trends and advances in discrete geometry, particularly in the theory of polytopes. The rapid development of abstract polytope theory has resulted in a rich theory featuring an attractive interplay of methods and tools from discrete geometry, group theory, classical geometry, hyperbolic geometry and topology. Overall, the book shows how researchers from diverse backgrounds explore connections among the various discrete structures with symmetry as the unifying theme. The volume will be a valuable source as an introduction to the ideas of both combinatorial and geometric rigidity theory and its applications, incorporating the surprising impact of symmetry. It will appeal to students at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as post docs, structural engineers and chemists.

This book provides a detailed and largely self-contained description of various classical and new results on solvability and unsolvability of equations in explicit form. In particular, it offers a complete exposition of the relatively new area of topological Galois theory, initiated by the author. Applications of Galois theory to solvability of algebraic equations by radicals, basics of Picard–Vessiot theory, and Liouville's results on the class of functions representable by quadratures are also discussed. A unique feature of this book is that recent results are presented in the same elementary manner as classical Galois theory, which will make the book useful and interesting to readers with varied backgrounds in mathematics, from undergraduate students to researchers. In this English-language edition, extra material has been added (Appendices A–D), the last two of which were written jointly with Yura Burda.

Signal processing is the discipline of extracting information from collections of measurements. To be effective, the measurements must be organized and then filtered, detected, or transformed to expose the desired information. Distortions caused by uncertainty, noise, and clutter degrade the performance of practical signal processing systems.In aggressively uncertain situations, the full truth about an underlying signal cannot be known. This book develops the theory and practice of signal processing systems for these situations that extract useful, qualitative information using the mathematics of topology -- the study of spaces under continuous transformations. Since the collection of continuous transformations is large and varied, tools which are topologically-motivated are automatically insensitive to substantial distortion. The target audience comprises practitioners as well as researchers, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Algebra, geometry and topology cover a variety of different, but intimately related research fields in modern mathematics. This book focuses on specific aspects of this interaction. The present volume contains refereed papers which were presented at the International Conference "Experimental and Theoretical Methods in Algebra, Geometry and Topology", held in Eforie Nord (near Constanta), Romania, during 20-25 June 2013. The conference was devoted to the 60th anniversary of the distinguished Romanian mathematicians Alexandru Dimca and Stefan Papadima. The selected papers consist of original research work and a survey paper. They are intended for a large audience, including researchers and graduate students interested in algebraic geometry, combinatorics, topology, hyperplane arrangements and commutative algebra. The papers are written by well-known experts from different fields of mathematics, affiliated to universities from all over the word, they cover a broad range of topics and explore the research frontiers of a wide variety of contemporary problems of modern mathematics.

A systematic and integrated approach to Cantor Sets and their applications to various branches of mathematics The Elements of Cantor Sets: With Applications features a thorough introduction to Cantor Sets and applies these sets as a bridge between real analysis, probability, topology, and algebra. The author fills a gap in the current literature by providing an introductory and integrated perspective, thereby preparing readers for further study and building a deeper understanding of analysis, topology, set theory, number theory, and algebra. The Elements of Cantor Sets provides coverage of: * Basic definitions and background theorems as well as comprehensive mathematical details * A biography of Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor, one of the most significant mathematicians of the last century * Chapter coverage of fractals and self-similar sets, sums of Cantor Sets, the role of Cantor Sets in creating pathological functions, p-adic numbers, and several generalizations of Cantor Sets * A wide spectrum of topics from measure theory to the Monty Hall Problem An ideal text for courses in real analysis, topology, algebra, and set theory for undergraduate and graduate-level courses within mathematics, computer science, engineering, and physics departments, The Elements of Cantor Sets is also appropriate as a useful reference for researchers and secondary mathematics education majors.

This book is an introduction to the theory of Hilbert space, a fundamental tool for non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Linear, topological, metric, and normed spaces are all addressed in detail, in a rigorous but reader-friendly fashion. The rationale for an introduction to the theory of Hilbert space, rather than a detailed study of Hilbert space theory itself, resides in the very high mathematical difficulty of even the simplest physical case. Within an ordinary graduate course in physics there is insufficient time to cover the theory of Hilbert spaces and operators, as well as distribution theory, with sufficient mathematical rigor. Compromises must be found between full rigor and practical use of the instruments. The book is based on the author's lessons on functional analysis for graduate students in physics. It will equip the reader to approach Hilbert space and, subsequently, rigged Hilbert space, with a more practical attitude. With respect to the original lectures, the mathematical flavor in all subjects has been enriched. Moreover, a brief introduction to topological groups has been added in addition to exercises and solved problems throughout the text. With these improvements, the book can be used in upper undergraduate and lower graduate courses, both in Physics and in Mathematics.

Manifolds fall naturally into two classes depending on whether they can be fitted with a distance measuring function or not. The former, metrisable manifolds, and especially compact manifolds, have been intensively studied by topologists for over a century, whereas the latter, non-metrisable manifolds, are much more abundant but have a more modest history, having become of increasing interest only over the past 40 years or so. The first book on this topic, this book ranges from criteria for metrisability, dynamics on non-metrisable manifolds, Nyikos's Bagpipe Theorem and whether perfectly normal manifolds are metrisable to structures on manifolds, especially the abundance of exotic differential structures and the dearth of foliations on the long plane. A rigid foliation of the Euclidean plane is described. This book is intended for graduate students and mathematicians who are curious about manifolds beyond the metrisability wall, and especially the use of Set Theory as a tool.

Topology-based methods are of increasing importance in the analysis and visualization of datasets from a wide variety of scientific domains such as biology, physics, engineering, and medicine. Current challenges of topology-based techniques include the management of time-dependent data, the representation of large and complex datasets, the characterization of noise and uncertainty, the effective integration of numerical methods with robust combinatorial algorithms, etc. . The editors have brought together the most prominent and best recognized researchers in the field of topology-based data analysis and visualization for a joint discussion and scientific exchange of the latest results in the field. This book contains the best 20 peer-reviewed papers resulting from the discussions and presentations at the third workshop on "Topological Methods in Data Analysis and Visualization", held 2009 in Snowbird, Utah, US. The 2009 "TopoInVis" workshop follows the two successful workshops in 2005 (Slovakia) and 2007 (Germany).

This book contains papers presented at the Workshop on the Analysis of Large-scale, High-Dimensional, and Multi-Variate Data Using Topology and Statistics, held in Le Barp, France, June 2013. It features the work of some of the most prominent and recognized leaders in the field who examine challenges as well as detail solutions to the analysis of extreme scale data. The book presents new methods that leverage the mutual strengths of both topological and statistical techniques to support the management, analysis, and visualization of complex data. It covers both theory and application and provides readers with an overview of important key concepts and the latest research trends. Coverage in the book includes multi-variate and/or high-dimensional analysis techniques, feature-based statistical methods, combinatorial algorithms, scalable statistics algorithms, scalar and vector field topology, and multi-scale representations. In addition, the book details algorithms that are broadly applicable and can be used by application scientists to glean insight from a wide range of complex data sets.

Classical in its approach, this textbook is thoughtfully designed and composed in two parts. Part I is meant for a one-semester beginning graduate course in measure theory, proposing an "abstract" approach to measure and integration, where the classical concrete cases of Lebesgue measure and Lebesgue integral are presented as an important particular case of general theory. Part II of the text is more advanced and is addressed to a more experienced reader. The material is designed to cover another one-semester graduate course subsequent to a first course, dealing with measure and integration in topological spaces. The final section of each chapter in Part I presents problems that are integral to each chapter, the majority of which consist of auxiliary results, extensions of the theory, examples, and counterexamples. Problems which are highly theoretical have accompanying hints. The last section of each chapter of Part II consists of Additional Propositions containing auxiliary and complementary results. The entire book contains collections of suggested readings at the end of each chapter in order to highlight alternate approaches, proofs, and routes toward additional results. With modest prerequisites, this text is intended to meet the needs of a contemporary course in measure theory for mathematics students and is also accessible to a wider student audience, namely those in statistics, economics, engineering, and physics. Part I may be also accessible to advanced undergraduates who fulfill the prerequisites which include an introductory course in analysis, linear algebra (Chapter 5 only), and elementary set theory.

This collection of peer-reviewed conference papers provides comprehensive coverage of cutting-edge research in topological approaches to data analysis and visualization. It encompasses the full range of new algorithms and insights, including fast homology computation, comparative analysis of simplification techniques, and key applications in materials and medical science. The volume also features material on core research challenges such as the representation of large and complex datasets and integrating numerical methods with robust combinatorial algorithms. Reflecting the focus of the TopoInVis 2013 conference, the contributions evince the progress currently being made on finding experimental solutions to open problems in the sector. They provide an inclusive snapshot of state-of-the-art research that enables researchers to keep abreast of the latest developments and provides a foundation for future progress. With papers by some of the world’s leading experts in topological techniques, this volume is a major contribution to the literature in a field of growing importance with applications in disciplines that range from engineering to medicine.

This ambitious and original book sets out to introduce to mathematicians (even including graduate students ) the mathematical methods of theoretical and experimental quantum field theory, with an emphasis on coordinate-free presentations of the mathematical objects in use. This in turn promotes the interaction between mathematicians and physicists by supplying a common and flexible language for the good of both communities, though mathematicians are the primary target. This reference work provides a coherent and complete mathematical toolbox for classical and quantum field theory, based on categorical and homotopical methods, representing an original contribution to the literature. The first part of the book introduces the mathematical methods needed to work with the physicists' spaces of fields, including parameterized and functional differential geometry, functorial analysis, and the homotopical geometric theory of non-linear partial differential equations, with applications to general gauge theories. The second part presents a large family of examples of classical field theories, both from experimental and theoretical physics, while the third part provides an introduction to quantum field theory, presents various renormalization methods, and discusses the quantization of factorization algebras.

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.

There has been an increasing interest in the statistical analysis of geometric objects and structures in many branches of science and engineering in recent years. The aim of this book is to present these statistical methods for practical use by non-mathematicians by outlining the mathematical ideas rather than concentrating on detailed proofs. The clarity of exposition ensures that the book will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in many scientific disciplines who wish to use these methods in their work. In particular, the book is suited to materials scientists, geologists, environmental scientists, and biologists.