This article is dedicated to Claudio Bunster on the occasion of his 60th birthday. It is a great honor to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to him, who in my opinion has been the greatest national physicist ever, for his wise guidance and intrepid support through the years. As a Chilean, I can further tell that Claudio's contributions have been well far beyond theoretical physics, helping our country to be ready to face future challenges through science. Gravity in diverse dimensions is a subject in which Claudio has done major c- tributions, encouraging in many ways the following work, that is being made along different fronts in collaboration with my colleagues Diego Correa, Gustavo Dotti, Julio Oliva and David Tempo. Thepursuitforwormholesolutions,whicharehandlesinthespacetimetopology, it is as old as General Relativity and it has appeared in theoretical physics within different subjects, ranging from the attempt of describing physics as pure geometry, as in the Einstein-Rosen bridge model of a particle [1], to the concept of "charge withoutcharge"[2],aswell asindifferentissuesconcerningthe Euclideanapproach to quantum gravity (see, e.g., [3]). More recently, the systematic study of this kind of objects was pushed forward by the works of Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever [4,5].

'The authors provide an up-to-date, well-organised background and essential elements of supergravity notions as well as all relevant aspects of Chern-Simons forms in gravitation. The book is a self-contained, informative, and much-needed broad introduction into the latest quantum gravity concepts, with a main focus on Chern-Simons gravity and supersymmetry ... The book represents a comprehensive and systematic pedagogical exposition on gravitational Chern-Simons (Super)gravity theories, their applications, together with a selection of related recent developments in the field.'Contemporary PhysicsThis book grew out of a set of lecture notes on gravitational Chern-Simons (CS) theories developed over the past decade for several schools and different audiences including graduate students and researchers.CS theories are gauge-invariant theories that can include gravity consistently. They are only defined in odd dimensions and represent a very special class of theories in the Lovelock family. Lovelock gravitation theories are the natural extensions of General Relativity for dimensions greater than four that yield second-order field equations for the metric. These theories also admit local supersymmetric extensions where supersymmetry is an off-shell symmetry of the action, as in a standard gauge theory.Apart from the arguments of mathematical elegance and beauty, the gravitational CS actions are exceptionally endowed with physical attributes that suggest the viability of a quantum interpretation. CS theories are gauge-invariant, scale-invariant and background independent; they have no dimensional coupling constants. All constants in the Lagrangian are fixed rational coefficients that cannot be adjusted without destroying gauge invariance. This exceptional status of CS systems makes them classically interesting to study, and quantum mechanically intriguing and promising.

From January 8-13,1990, distinguished physicists from many nations came to Chile to share with each other and with Latin American students exciting recent developments. The occasion was the third of a series of meetings on Quantum Mechanics of Fundamental Systems which are held every two years at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Santiago. This volume grew out from that gathering. The meeting was possible thanks to the generous support of the Tinker Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Ministere des AfIaires Etrangeres et Service Culturel et de Cooperation Scientifique et Technique de France, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and FONDECYT-Chile. The happy winds blowing over Chile at the time enhanced the joy provided by the beauty of the physics discussed. Claudio Teitelboim Jorge Zanelli Santiago, Chile vii Contents Chapter 1 Fractional Statistics in Quantum Mechanics Daniel P. Arovas 1. Introduction...1 2. Charge-Flux Composites...4 3. Dilute Anyon Gases ...6 4. Fractional Statistics in the Quantized Hall Effect ...8 5. Many-Body Theory of the Anyon Gas...16 6. Chern-Simons Field Theory and Fractional Statistics ...20 Appendix: Many Anyons in a Magnetic Field...23 . .

This volume is based on a meeting on Quantum Mechanics of Fundamental Systems, held December 17-20 of 1987, at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Santiago (CECS). The meeting was intended to review new developments in the field defined by its purposely vague title. We were especially interested in communicating important advances in a broad perspective and in a self-contained manner to a wide colleague- ship, and in particular to Latin American physicists. Whatever success we may have achieved in that direction would cer- tainly not have been possible without the help and generosity of many people. For their kind support we thank the Tinker Foundation, the Inter- national Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres et Service Culturel et de Cooperation Scientifique et Technique de France and the Centro Latinoamericano de Fisica. We are especially grateful to the Santiago College and to its principal, Rebeca Donoso, for allowing us to hold the meeting at that school when, at the last moment, we were deprived of the previously arranged meeting site. Last but not least we thank the participants for an extraordinary week and the CECS staff for performing, as usual, beyond any reasonable expectation.

This article is dedicated to Claudio Bunster on the occasion of his 60th birthday. It is a great honor to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to him, who in my opinion has been the greatest national physicist ever, for his wise guidance and intrepid support through the years. As a Chilean, I can further tell that Claudio's contributions have been well far beyond theoretical physics, helping our country to be ready to face future challenges through science. Gravity in diverse dimensions is a subject in which Claudio has done major c- tributions, encouraging in many ways the following work, that is being made along different fronts in collaboration with my colleagues Diego Correa, Gustavo Dotti, Julio Oliva and David Tempo. Thepursuitforwormholesolutions,whicharehandlesinthespacetimetopology, it is as old as General Relativity and it has appeared in theoretical physics within different subjects, ranging from the attempt of describing physics as pure geometry, as in the Einstein-Rosen bridge model of a particle [1], to the concept of "charge withoutcharge"[2],aswell asindifferentissuesconcerningthe Euclideanapproach to quantum gravity (see, e.g., [3]). More recently, the systematic study of this kind of objects was pushed forward by the works of Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever [4,5].