Incorporated in this 2003 volume are the first two books in Mukai's series on moduli theory. The notion of a moduli space is central to geometry. However, its influence is not confined there; for example, the theory of moduli spaces is a crucial ingredient in the proof of Fermat's last theorem. Researchers and graduate students working in areas ranging from Donaldson or Seiberg-Witten invariants to more concrete problems such as vector bundles on curves will find this to be a valuable resource. Amongst other things this volume includes an improved presentation of the classical foundations of invarant theory that, in addition to geometers, would be useful to those studying representation theory. This translation gives an accurate account of Mukai's influential Japanese texts.

Incorporated in this volume are the first two books in Mukai's series on Moduli Theory. The notion of a moduli space is central to geometry. However, its influence is not confined there; for example, the theory of moduli spaces is a crucial ingredient in the proof of Fermat's last theorem. Researchers and graduate students working in areas ranging from Donaldson or Seiberg-Witten invariants to more concrete problems such as vector bundles on curves will find this to be a valuable resource. Among other things this volume includes an improved presentation of the classical foundations of invariant theory that, in addition to geometers, would be useful to those studying representation theory. This translation gives an accurate account of Mukai's influential Japanese texts.

Successive waves of migrant concepts, largely from mathematical physics, have stimulated the study of vector bundles over algebraic varieties in the past few years. But the subject has retained its roots in old questions concerning subvarieties of projective space. The 1993 Durham Symposium on vector bundles in algebraic geometry brought together some of the leading researchers in the field to further explore these interactions. This book is a collection of survey articles by the main speakers at the Symposium and presents to the mathematical world an overview of the key areas of research involving vector bundles. Topics include augmented bundles and coherent systems which link gauge theory and geometric invariant theory; Donaldson invariants of algebraic surfaces; Floer homology and quantum cohomology; conformal field theory and the moduli spaces of bundles on curves; the Horrocks-Mumford bundle and codimension 2 subvarieties in p4 and p5; and exceptional bundles and stable sheaves on projective space. This book will appeal greatly to mathematicians working in algebraic geometry and areas adjoining mathematical physics.