Providing an introduction to current research topics in functional analysis and its applications to quantum physics, this book presents three lectures surveying recent progress and open problems. A special focus is given to the role of symmetry in non-commutative probability, in the theory of quantum groups, and in quantum physics. The first lecture presents the close connection between distributional symmetries and independence properties. The second introduces many structures (graphs, C*-algebras, discrete groups) whose quantum symmetries are much richer than their classical symmetry groups, and describes the associated quantum symmetry groups. The last lecture shows how functional analytic and geometric ideas can be used to detect and to quantify entanglement in high dimensions. The book will allow graduate students and young researchers to gain a better understanding of free probability, the theory of compact quantum groups, and applications of the theory of Banach spaces to quantum information. The latter applications will also be of interest to theoretical and mathematical physicists working in quantum theory.

This volume contains the notes of lectures given at the School "Quantum Potential Theory: Structure and Applications to Physics." This school was held at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald from February 26 to March 9, 2007. We thank the lecturers for the hard work they - complished in preparing and giving these lectures and in writing these notes. Theirlecturesgiveanintroductiontocurrentresearchintheirdomains, which is essentially self-contained and should be accessible to Ph.D. students. We hope that this volume will help to bring together researchers from the areas of classical and quantum probability, functional analysis and operator al- bras, and theoretical and mathematical physics, and contribute in this way to developing further the subject of quantum potential theory. We are greatly indebted to the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach- Stiftung for the ?nancial support, without which the school would not have been possible. We are also very thankful for the support by the University of Greifswald and the University of Franche-Comt e.One of the organisers(UF) wassupportedby a MarieCurieOutgoingInternationalFellowshipofthe EU (Contract Q-MALL MOIF-CT-2006-022137). Special thanks go to Melanie Hinz who helped with the preparation and organisation of the school and who took care of all of the logistics. Finally, we would like to thank all the students for coming to Greifswald and helping to make the school a success."

This volume is the first of two volumes containing the revised and completed notes lectures given at the school "Quantum Independent Increment Processes: Structure and Applications to Physics." This school was held at the Alfried-Krupp-Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald during the period March 9 - 22, 2003, and supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. The school gave an introduction to current research on quantum independent increment processes aimed at graduate students and non-specialists working in classical and quantum probability, operator algebras, and mathematical physics.

The present first volume contains the following lectures: "Levy Processes in Euclidean Spaces and Groups" by David Applebaum, "Locally Compact Quantum Groups" by Johan Kustermans, "Quantum Stochastic Analysis" by J. Martin Lindsay, and "Dilations, Cocycles and Product Systems" by B.V. Rajarama Bhat."

This is the second of two volumes containing the revised and completed notes of lectures given at the school "Quantum Independent Increment Processes: Structure and Applications to Physics." This school was held at the Alfried-Krupp-Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald in March, 2003, and supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. The school gave an introduction to current research on quantum independent increment processes aimed at graduate students and non-specialists working in classical and quantum probability, operator algebras, and mathematical physics.

The present second volume contains the following lectures: "Random Walks on Finite Quantum Groups" by Uwe Franz and Rolf Gohm, "Quantum Markov Processes and Applications in Physics" by Burkhard K mmerer, Classical and Free Infinite Divisibility and L vy Processes" by Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen, Steen Thorbjornsen, and "L vy Processes on Quantum Groups and Dual Groups" by Uwe Franz.

This monograph is a progressive introduction to non-commutativity in probability theory, summarizing and synthesizing recent results about classical and quantum stochastic processes on Lie algebras. In the early chapters, focus is placed on concrete examples of the links between algebraic relations and the moments of probability distributions. The subsequent chapters are more advanced and deal with Wigner densities for non-commutative couples of random variables, non-commutative stochastic processes with independent increments (quantum Levy processes), and the quantum Malliavin calculus. This book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in the relations between algebra, probability, and quantum theory. It also addresses a more advanced audience by covering other topics related to non-commutativity in stochastic calculus, Levy processes, and the Malliavin calculus.