The four contributions collected in this volume deal with several advanced results in analytic number theory. Friedlander's paper contains some recent achievements of sieve theory leading to asymptotic formulae for the number of primes represented by suitable polynomials. Heath-Brown's lecture notes mainly deal with counting integer solutions to Diophantine equations, using among other tools several results from algebraic geometry and from the geometry of numbers. Iwaniec's paper gives a broad picture of the theory of Siegel's zeros and of exceptional characters of L-functions, and gives a new proof of Linnik's theorem on the least prime in an arithmetic progression. Kaczorowski's article presents an up-to-date survey of the axiomatic theory of L-functions introduced by Selberg, with a detailed exposition of several recent results.

This volume contains the expanded versions of the lectures given by the authors at the C.I.M.E. instructional conference held in Cetraro, Italy, from July 12 to 19, 1997. The papers collected here are broad surveys of the current research in the arithmetic of elliptic curves, and also contain several new results which cannot be found elsewhere in the literature. Owing to clarity and elegance of exposition, and to the background material explicitly included in the text or quoted in the references, the volume is well suited to research students as well as to senior mathematicians.