This book contains original research papers by leading experts in the fields of probability theory, stochastic analysis, potential theory and mathematical physics. There is also a historical account on Masatoshi Fukushima's contribution to mathematics, as well as authoritative surveys on the state of the art in the field.

This book contains an introductory and comprehensive account of the theory of (symmetric) Dirichlet forms. Moreover this analytic theory is unified with the probabilistic potential theory based on symmetric Markov processes and developed further in conjunction with the stochastic analysis based on additive functional. Since the publication of the first edition in 1994, this book has attracted constant interests from readers and is by now regarded as a standard reference for the theory of Dirichlet forms. For the present second edition, the authors not only revised the existing text, but also added sections on capacities and Sobolev type inequalities, irreducible recurrence and ergodicity, recurrence and Poincare type inequalities, the Donsker-Varadhan type large deviation principle, as well as several new exercises with solutions. The book addresses to researchers and graduate students who wish to comprehend the area of Dirichlet forms and symmetric Markov processes.

Masatoshi Fukushima is one of the most influential probabilists of our times. His fundamental work on Dirichlet forms and Markov processes made Hilbert space methods a tool in stochastic analysis and by this he opened the way to several new developments. His impact on a new generation of probabilists can hardly be overstated. These Selecta collect 25 of Fukushima's seminal articles published between 1967 and 2007.