This book collects the scientific contributions of a group of leading experts who took part in the INdAM Meeting held in Cortona in September 2014. With combinatorial techniques as the central theme, it focuses on recent developments in configuration spaces from various perspectives. It also discusses their applications in areas ranging from representation theory, toric geometry and geometric group theory to applied algebraic topology.

Lie theory is a mathematical framework for encoding the concept of symmetries of a problem, and was the central theme of an INdAM intensive research period at the Centro de Giorgi in Pisa, Italy, in the academic year 2014-2015. This book gathers the key outcomes of this period, addressing topics such as: structure and representation theory of vertex algebras, Lie algebras and superalgebras, as well as hyperplane arrangements with different approaches, ranging from geometry and topology to combinatorics.

A valuable addition to the Lecture Notes in Pure and Applied Mathematics series, this reference results from a conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in honor of Dr. Z. Borevich. This volume is mainly devoted to the contributions related to the European Science Foundation workshop, organized under the framework of noncommuntative geometry and integrated in the Borevich meeting. The topics presented, including algebraic groups and representations, algebraic number theory, rings, and modules, are a timely distillation of recent work in the field. Featuring a wide range of international experts as contributors, this book is an ideal reference for mathematicians in algebra and algebraic geometry.

This book gives a unified, complete, and self-contained exposition of the main algebraic theorems of invariant theory for matrices in a characteristic free approach. More precisely, it contains the description of polynomial functions in several variables on the set of $m\times m$ matrices with coefficients in an infinite field or even the ring of integers, invariant under simultaneous conjugation. Following Hermann Weyl's classical approach, the ring of invariants is described by formulating and proving the first fundamental theorem that describes a set of generators in the ring of invariants, and the second fundamental theorem that describes relations between these generators. The authors study both the case of matrices over a field of characteristic 0 and the case of matrices over a field of positive characteristic. While the case of characteristic 0 can be treated following a classical approach, the case of positive characteristic (developed by Donkin and Zubkov) is much harder. A presentation of this case requires the development of a collection of tools. These tools and their application to the study of invariants are exlained in an elementary, self-contained way in the book.

This book collects the scientific contributions of a group of leading experts who took part in the INdAM Meeting held in Cortona in September 2014. With combinatorial techniques as the central theme, it focuses on recent developments in configuration spaces from various perspectives. It also discusses their applications in areas ranging from representation theory, toric geometry and geometric group theory to applied algebraic topology.

Topics in Hyperplane Arrangements, Polytopes and Box-Splines brings together many areas of mathematics that focus on methods to compute the number of integral points in suitable families or variable polytopes. The topics introduced expand upon differential and difference equations, approximation theory, cohomology, and module theory. The discussion is divided into five extensive parts; the first of which provides basic material on convex sets, combinatorics, polytopes, Laplace and Fourier transforms, and the language of modules over the Weyl algebra. The following four sections focus on the differentiable case, discrete case, and several applications, e.i., two independent chapters explore the computations of De Rham cohomology for the complement of a hyperplane or toric arrangement. This book, written by two distinguished authors, engages a broad audience by providing a strong foundation in very important areas. This book may be used in a classroom setting as well as a reference for researchers.

A valuable addition to the Lecture Notes in Pure and Applied Mathematics series, this reference results from a conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in honor of Dr. Z. Borevich. This volume is mainly devoted to the contributions related to the European Science Foundation workshop, organized under the framework of noncommuntative geometry and integrated in the Borevich meeting. The topics presented, including algebraic groups and representations, algebraic number theory, rings, and modules, are a timely distillation of recent work in the field. Featuring a wide range of international experts as contributors, this book is an ideal reference for mathematicians in algebra and algebraic geometry.