This book covers the fundamental results of the dimension theory of metrizable spaces, especially in the separable case. Its distinctive feature is the emphasis on the negative results for more general spaces, presenting a readable account of numerous counterexamples to well-known conjectures that have not been discussed in existing books. Moreover, it includes three new general methods for constructing spaces: Mrowka's psi-spaces, van Douwen's technique of assigning limit points to carefully selected sequences, and Fedorchuk's method of resolutions. Accessible to readers familiar with the standard facts of general topology, the book is written in a reader-friendly style suitable for self-study. It contains enough material for one or more graduate courses in dimension theory and/or general topology. More than half of the contents do not appear in existing books, making it also a good reference for libraries and researchers.
The principles of symmetry and self-similarity structure nature's most beautiful creations. For example, they are expressed in fractals, famous for their beautiful but complicated geometric structure, which is the subject of study in dimension theory. And in dynamics the presence of invariant fractals often results in unstable "turbulent-like" motions and is associated with "chaotic" behavior. In this book, Yakov Pesin introduces a new area of research that has recently appeared in the interface between dimension theory and the theory of dynamical systems. Focusing on invariant fractals and their influence on stochastic properties of systems, Pesin provides a comprehensive and systematic treatment of modern dimension theory in dynamical systems, summarizes the current state of research, and describes the most important accomplishments of this field. Pesin's synthesis of these subjects of broad current research interest will be appreciated both by advanced mathematicians and by a wide range of scientists who depend upon mathematical modeling of dynamical processes.
This is the first of the encyclopaedia volumes devoted to general topology. It has two parts. The first outlines the basic concepts and constructions of general topology, including several topics which have not previously been covered in English language texts. The second part presents a survey of dimension theory, from the very beginnings to the most important recent developments. The principal ideas and methods are treated in detail, and the main results are provided with sketches of proofs. The authors have suceeded admirably in the difficult task of writing a book which will not only be accessible to the general scientist and the undergraduate, but will also appeal to the professional mathematician. The authors' efforts to detail the relationship between more specialized topics and the central themes of topology give the book a broad scholarly appeal which far transcends narrow disciplinary lines.
This self-contained monograph presents a unified exposition of the thermodynamic formalism and some of its main extensions, with emphasis on the relation to dimension theory and multifractal analysis of dynamical systems. In particular, the book considers three different flavors of the thermodynamic formalism, namely nonadditive, subadditive, and almost additive, and provides a detailed discussion of some of the most significant results in the area, some of them quite recent. It also includes a discussion of the most substantial applications of these flavors of the thermodynamic formalism to dimension theory and multifractal analysis of dynamical systems.
Conformal dimension measures the extent to which the Hausdorff dimension of a metric space can be lowered by quasisymmetric deformations. Introduced by Pansu in 1989, this concept has proved extremely fruitful in a diverse range of areas, including geometric function theory, conformal dynamics, and geometric group theory. This survey leads the reader from the definitions and basic theory through to active research applications in geometric function theory, Gromov hyperbolic geometry, and the dynamics of rational maps, amongst other areas. It reviews the theory of dimension in metric spaces and of deformations of metric spaces. It summarizes the basic tools for estimating conformal dimension and illustrates their application to concrete problems of independent interest. Numerous examples and proofs are provided. Working from basic definitions through to current research areas, this book can be used as a guide for graduate students interested in this field, or as a helpful survey for experts. Background needed for a potential reader of the book consists of a working knowledge of real and complex analysis on the level of first- and second-year graduate courses.
Bibliotheca Mathematica, Volume 6: Modern Dimension Theory provides a brief account of dimension theory as it has been developed since 1941, including the principal results of the classical theory for separable metric spaces. This book discusses the decomposition theorem, Baire's zero-dimensional spaces, dimension of separable metric spaces, and characterization of dimension by a sequence of coverings. The imbedding of countable-dimensional spaces, sum theorem for strong inductive dimension, and cohomology group of a topological space are also elaborated. This text likewise covers the uniformly zero-dimensional mappings, theorems in euclidean space, transfinite inductive dimension, and dimension of non-metrizable spaces. This volume is recommended to students and specialists researching on dimension theory.
Over the last two decades, the dimension theory of dynamical systems has progressively developed into an independent and extremely active field of research. The main aim of this volume is to offer a unified, self-contained introduction to the interplay of these three main areas of research: ergodic theory, hyperbolic dynamics, and dimension theory. It starts with the basic notions of the first two topics and ends with a sufficiently high-level introduction to the third. Furthermore, it includes an introduction to the thermodynamic formalism, which is an important tool in dimension theory. The volume is primarily intended for graduate students interested in dynamical systems, as well as researchers in other areas who wish to learn about ergodic theory, thermodynamic formalism, or dimension theory of hyperbolic dynamics at an intermediate level in a sufficiently detailed manner. In particular, it can be used as a basis for graduate courses on any of these three subjects. The text can also be used for self-study: it is self-contained, and with the exception of some well-known basic facts from other areas, all statements include detailed proofs.
Historically, for metric spaces the quest for universal spaces in dimension theory spanned approximately a century of mathematical research. The history breaks naturally into two periods - the classical (separable metric) and the modern (not-necessarily separable metric). The classical theory is now well documented in several books. This monograph is the first book to unify the modern theory from 1960-2007. Like the classical theory, the modern theory fundamentally involves the unit interval. Unique features include: * The use of graphics to illustrate the fractal view of these spaces; * Lucid coverage of a range of topics including point-set topology and mapping theory, fractal geometry, and algebraic topology; * A final chapter contains surveys and provides historical context for related research that includes other imbedding theorems, graph theory, and closed imbeddings; * Each chapter contains a comment section that provides historical context with references that serve as a bridge to the literature. This monograph will be useful to topologists, to mathematicians working in fractal geometry, and to historians of mathematics. Being the first monograph to focus on the connection between generalized fractals and universal spaces in dimension theory, it will be a natural text for graduate seminars or self-study - the interested reader will find many relevant open problems which will create further research into these topics.
Are there other dimensions beyond our own? Is time travel possible? Can we change the past? Are there gateways to parallel universes? All of us have pondered such questions, but there was a time when scientists dismissed these notions as outlandish speculations. Not any more. Today, they are the focus of the most intense scientific activity in recent memory. In Hyperspace, Michio Kaku, author of the widely acclaimed Beyond Einstein and a leading theoretical physicist, offers the first book-length tour of the most exciting (and perhaps most bizarre) work in modern physics, work which includes research on the tenth dimension, time warps, black holes, and multiple universes. The theory of hyperspace (or higher dimensional space)--and its newest wrinkle, superstring theory--stand at the center of this revolution, with adherents in every major research laboratory in the world, including several Nobel laureates. Beginning where Hawking's Brief History of Time left off, Kaku paints a vivid portrayal of the breakthroughs now rocking the physics establishment. Why all the excitement? As the author points out, for over half a century, scientists have puzzled over why the basic forces of the cosmos--gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces--require markedly different mathematical descriptions. But if we see these forces as vibrations in a higher dimensional space, their field equations suddenly fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, perfectly snug, in an elegant, astonishingly simple form. This may thus be our leading candidate for the Theory of Everything. If so, it would be the crowning achievement of 2,000 years of scientific investigation into matter and its forces. Already, the theory has inspired several thousand research papers, and has been the focus of over 200 international conferences. Michio Kaku is one of the leading pioneers in superstring theory and has been at the forefront of this revolution in modern physics. With Hyperspace, he has produced a book for general readers which conveys the vitality of the field and the excitement as scientists grapple with the meaning of space and time. It is an exhilarating look at physics today and an eye-opening glimpse into the ultimate nature of the universe.
