Six leading experts lecture on a wide spectrum of recent results on the subject of the title, providing both a solid reference and deep insights on current research activity. Michael Cowling presents a survey of various interactions between representation theory and harmonic analysis on semisimple groups and symmetric spaces. Alain Valette recalls the concept of amenability and shows how it is used in the proof of rigidity results for lattices of semisimple Lie groups. Edward Frenkel describes the geometric Langlands correspondence for complex algebraic curves, concentrating on the ramified case where a finite number of regular singular points is allowed. Masaki Kashiwara studies the relationship between the representation theory of real semisimple Lie groups and the geometry of the flag manifolds associated with the corresponding complex algebraic groups. David Vogan deals with the problem of getting unitary representations out of those arising from complex analysis, such as minimal globalizations realized on Dolbeault cohomology with compact support. Nolan Wallach illustrates how representation theory is related to quantum computing, focusing on the study of qubit entanglement.

This book is an expanded version of the Hermann Weyl Lectures given at the Institute for Advanced Study in January 1986. It outlines some of what is now known about irreducible unitary representations of real reductive groups, providing fairly complete definitions and references, and sketches (at least) of most proofs.

The first half of the book is devoted to the three more or less understood constructions of such representations: parabolic induction, complementary series, and cohomological parabolic induction. This culminates in the description of all irreducible unitary representation of the general linear groups. For other groups, one expects to need a new construction, giving "unipotent representations." The latter half of the book explains the evidence for that expectation and suggests a partial definition of unipotent representations.

This book offers a systematic treatment--the first in book form--of the development and use of cohomological induction to construct unitary representations. George Mackey introduced induction in 1950 as a real analysis construction for passing from a unitary representation of a closed subgroup of a locally compact group to a unitary representation of the whole group. Later a parallel construction using complex analysis and its associated co-homology theories grew up as a result of work by Borel, Weil, Harish-Chandra, Bott, Langlands, Kostant, and Schmid. Cohomological induction, introduced by Zuckerman, is an algebraic analog that is technically more manageable than the complex-analysis construction and leads to a large repertory of irreducible unitary representations of reductive Lie groups.

The book, which is accessible to students beyond the first year of graduate school, will interest mathematicians and physicists who want to learn about and take advantage of the algebraic side of the representation theory of Lie groups. "Cohomological Induction and Unitary Representations" develops the necessary background in representation theory and includes an introductory chapter of motivation, a thorough treatment of the "translation principle," and four appendices on algebra and analysis.