* Up-to-date reference on this exciting area of mathematics * Discusses the wide range of applications in topology, algebraic geometry, and catastrophe theory.
This volume is the conference proceedings of the NATO ARW during August 2001 at Kananaskis Village, Canada on 'New Techniques in Topological Quantum Field Theory'. This conference brought together specialists from a number of different fields all related to Topological Quantum Field Theory. The theme of this conference was to attempt to find new methods in quantum topology from the interaction with specialists in these other fields. The featured articles include papers by V. Vassiliev on combinatorial formulas for cohomology of spaces of Knots, the computation of Ohtsuki series by N. Jacoby and R. Lawrence, and a paper by M. Asaeda and J. Przytycki on the torsion conjecture for Khovanov homology by Shumakovitch. Moreover, there are articles on more classical topics related to manifolds and braid groups by such well known authors as D. Rolfsen, H. Zieschang and F. Cohen.
This is the third volume of the Handbook of Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series which aims to provide an accessible account of the state of the art of the subject, its frontiers, and its interactions with other areas of research. This volume consists of ten chapters which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of various important aspects of singularity theory. Some of these complement topics previously explored in volumes I and II, such as, for instance, Zariski’s equisingularity, the interplay between isolated complex surface singularities and 3-manifold theory, stratified Morse theory, constructible sheaves, the topology of the non-critical levels of holomorphic functions, and intersection cohomology. Other chapters bring in new subjects, such as the Thom–Mather theory for maps, characteristic classes for singular varieties, mixed Hodge structures, residues in complex analytic varieties, nearby and vanishing cycles, and more. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject, and in other subjects. Authored by world experts, the various contributions deal with both classical material and modern developments, covering a wide range of topics which are linked to each other in fundamental ways. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.
Surgery theory, the basis for the classification theory of manifolds, is now about forty years old. The sixtieth birthday (on December 14, 1996) of C.T.C. Wall, a leading member of the subject's founding generation, led the editors of this volume to reflect on the extraordinary accomplishments of surgery theory as well as its current enormously varied interactions with algebra, analysis, and geometry. Workers in many of these areas have often lamented the lack of a single source surveying surgery theory and its applications. Because no one person could write such a survey, the editors asked a variety of experts to report on the areas of current interest. This is the second of two volumes resulting from that collective effort. It will be useful to topologists, to other interested researchers, and to advanced students. The topics covered include current applications of surgery, Wall's finiteness obstruction, algebraic surgery, automorphisms and embeddings of manifolds, surgery theoretic methods for the study of group actions and stratified spaces, metrics of positive scalar curvature, and surgery in dimension four. In addition to the editors, the contributors are S. Ferry, M. Weiss, B. Williams, T. Goodwillie, J. Klein, S. Weinberger, B. Hughes, S. Stolz, R. Kirby, L. Taylor, and F. Quinn.
This Seminar began in Moscow in November 1943 and has continued without interruption up to the present. We are happy that with this vol ume, Birkhiiuser has begun to publish papers of talks from the Seminar. It was, unfortunately, difficult to organize their publication before 1990. Since 1990, most of the talks have taken place at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Parallel seminars were also held in Moscow, and during July, 1992, at IRES in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. Speakers were invited to submit papers in their own style, and to elaborate on what they discussed in the Seminar. We hope that readers will find the diversity of styles appealing, and recognize that to some extent this reflects the diversity of styles in a mathematical society. The principal aim was to have interesting talks, even if the topic was not especially popular at the time. The papers listed in the Table of Contents reflect some of the rich variety of ideas presented in the Seminar. Not all the speakers submit ted papers. Among the interesting talks that influenced the seminar in an important way, let us mention, for example, that of R. Langlands on per colation theory and those of J. Conway and J. McKay on sporadic groups. In addition, there were many extemporaneous talks as well as short discus sions.
Over the last fifteen years, the face of knot theory has changed due to various new theories and invariants coming from physics, topology, combinatorics and alge-bra. It suffices to mention the great progress in knot homology theory (Khovanov homology and Ozsvath-Szabo Heegaard-Floer homology), the A-polynomial which give rise to strong invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, in particular, many new unknot detectors. New to this Edition is a discussion of Heegaard-Floer homology theory and A-polynomial of classical links, as well as updates throughout the text. Knot Theory, Second Edition is notable not only for its expert presentation of knot theory’s state of the art but also for its accessibility. It is valuable as a profes-sional reference and will serve equally well as a text for a course on knot theory.
Upon publication, the first edition of the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics received overwhelming accolades for its unparalleled scope, readability, and utility. It soon took its place among the top selling books in the history of Chapman & Hall/CRC, and its popularity continues unabated. Yet also unabated has been the d
An extraordinary mathematical conference was held 5-9 August 1990 at the University of California at Berkeley: From Topology to Computation: Unity and Diversity in the Mathematical Sciences An International Research Conference in Honor of Stephen Smale's 60th Birthday The topics of the conference were some of the fields in which Smale has worked: • Differential Topology • Mathematical Economics • Dynamical Systems • Theory of Computation • Nonlinear Functional Analysis • Physical and Biological Applications This book comprises the proceedings of that conference. The goal of the conference was to gather in a single meeting mathemati cians working in the many fields to which Smale has made lasting con tributions. The theme "Unity and Diversity" is enlarged upon in the section entitled "Research Themes and Conference Schedule." The organizers hoped that illuminating connections between seemingly separate mathematical sub jects would emerge from the conference. Since such connections are not easily made in formal mathematical papers, the conference included discussions after each of the historical reviews of Smale's work in different fields. In addition, there was a final panel discussion at the end of the conference.