This book gives a modern differential geometric treatment of linearly nonholonomically constrained systems. It discusses in detail what is meant by symmetry of such a system and gives a general theory of how to reduce such a symmetry using the concept of a differential space and the almost Poisson bracket structure of its algebra of smooth functions. The above theory is applied to the concrete example of Carathodory's sleigh and the convex rolling rigid body. The qualitative behavior of the motion of the rolling disk is treated exhaustively and in detail. In particular, it classifies all motions of the disk, including those where the disk falls flat and those where it nearly falls flat.

The geometric techniques described in this book for symmetry reduction have not appeared in any book before. Nor has the detailed description of the motion of the rolling disk. In this respect, the authors are trail-blazers in their respective fields.

This book contains a revised and expanded version of the lecture notes of two seminar series given during the academic year 1976/77 at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Calgary, and in the summer of 1978 at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Technical University Clausthal. The aim of the seminars was to present geometric quantization from the point of view. of its applica tions to quantum mechanics, and to introduce the quantum dynamics of various physical systems as the result of the geometric quantization of the classical dynamics of these systems. The group representation aspects of geometric quantiza tion as well as proofs of the existence and the uniqueness of the introduced structures can be found in the expository papers of Blattner, Kostant, Sternberg and Wolf, and also in the references quoted in these papers. The books of Souriau (1970) and Simms and Woodhouse (1976) present the theory of geometric quantization and its relationship to quantum mech anics. The purpose of the present book is to complement the preceding ones by including new developments of the theory and emphasizing the computations leading to results in quantum mechanics."