Foreword by S S Chern In 1926-27, Cartan gave a series of lectures in which he introduced exterior forms at the very beginning and used extensively orthogonal frames throughout to investigate the geometry of Riemannian manifolds. In this course he solved a series of problems in Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces, as well as a series of variational problems on geodesics. In 1960, Sergei P Finikov translated from French into Russian his notes of these Cartan's lectures and published them as a book entitled Riemannian Geometry in an Orthogonal Frame. This book has many innovations, such as the notion of intrinsic normal differentiation and the Gaussian torsion of a submanifold in a Euclidean multidimensional space or in a space of constant curvature, an affine connection defined in a normal fiber bundle of a submanifold, etc. It has now been translated into English by Vladislav V Goldberg, currently Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA, who also edited the Russian edition.
Elie Cartan's book Geometry of Riemannian Manifolds (1928) was one of the best introductions to his methods. It was based on lectures given by the author at the Sorbonne in the academic year 1925-26. A modernized and extensively augmented edition appeared in 1946 (2nd printing, 1951, and 3rd printing, 1988). Cartan's lectures in 1926-27 were different -- he introduced exterior forms at the very beginning and used extensively orthonormal frames throughout to investigate the geometry of Riemannian manifolds. In this course he solved a series of problems in Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces, as well as a series of variational problems on geodesics. The lectures were translated into Russian in the book Riemannian Geometry in an Orthogonal Frame (1960). This book has many innovations, such as the notion of intrinsic normal differentiation and the Gaussian torsion of a submanifold in a Euclidean multidimensional space or in a space of constant curvature, an affine connection defined in a normal fiber bundle of a submanifold, etc. The only book of Elie Cartan that was not available in English, it has now been translated into English by Vladislav V Goldberg, the editor of the Russian edition.
Unlike many other texts on differential geometry, this textbook also offers interesting applications to geometric mechanics and general relativity. The first part is a concise and self-contained introduction to the basics of manifolds, differential forms, metrics and curvature. The second part studies applications to mechanics and relativity including the proofs of the Hawking and Penrose singularity theorems. It can be independently used for one-semester courses in either of these subjects. The main ideas are illustrated and further developed by numerous examples and over 300 exercises. Detailed solutions are provided for many of these exercises, making An Introduction to Riemannian Geometry ideal for self-study.
This text focuses on developing an intimate acquaintance with the geometric meaning of curvature and thereby introduces and demonstrates all the main technical tools needed for a more advanced course on Riemannian manifolds. It covers proving the four most fundamental theorems relating curvature and topology: the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, the Cartan-Hadamard Theorem, Bonnet’s Theorem, and a special case of the Cartan-Ambrose-Hicks Theorem.
This book is an exposition of semi-Riemannian geometry (also called pseudo-Riemannian geometry)--the study of a smooth manifold furnished with a metric tensor of arbitrary signature. The principal special cases are Riemannian geometry, where the metric is positive definite, and Lorentz geometry. For many years these two geometries have developed almost independently: Riemannian geometry reformulated in coordinate-free fashion and directed toward global problems, Lorentz geometry in classical tensor notation devoted to general relativity. More recently, this divergence has been reversed as physicists, turning increasingly toward invariant methods, have produced results of compelling mathematical interest.
Intended for a one year course, this volume serves as a single source, introducing students to the important techniques and theorems, while also containing enough background on advanced topics to appeal to those students wishing to specialise in Riemannian geometry. Instead of variational techniques, the author uses a unique approach, emphasising distance functions and special co-ordinate systems. He also uses standard calculus with some techniques from differential equations to provide a more elementary route. Many chapters contain material typically found in specialised texts, never before published in a single source. This is one of the few works to combine both the geometric parts of Riemannian geometry and the analytic aspects of the theory, while also presenting the most up-to-date research - including sections on convergence and compactness of families of manifolds. Thus, this book will appeal to readers with a knowledge of standard manifold theory, including such topics as tensors and Stokes theorem. Various exercises are scattered throughout the text, helping motivate readers to deepen their understanding of the subject.
Given a mathematical structure, one of the basic associated mathematical objects is its automorphism group. The object of this book is to give a biased account of automorphism groups of differential geometric struc tures. All geometric structures are not created equal; some are creations of ~ods while others are products of lesser human minds. Amongst the former, Riemannian and complex structures stand out for their beauty and wealth. A major portion of this book is therefore devoted to these two structures. Chapter I describes a general theory of automorphisms of geometric structures with emphasis on the question of when the automorphism group can be given a Lie group structure. Basic theorems in this regard are presented in §§ 3, 4 and 5. The concept of G-structure or that of pseudo-group structure enables us to treat most of the interesting geo metric structures in a unified manner. In § 8, we sketch the relationship between the two concepts. Chapter I is so arranged that the reader who is primarily interested in Riemannian, complex, conformal and projective structures can skip §§ 5, 6, 7 and 8. This chapter is partly based on lec tures I gave in Tokyo and Berkeley in 1965.
This book focuses on Hamilton's Ricci flow, beginning with a detailed discussion of the required aspects of differential geometry, progressing through existence and regularity theory, compactness theorems for Riemannian manifolds, and Perelman's noncollapsing results, and culminating in a detailed analysis of the evolution of curvature, where recent breakthroughs of Böhm and Wilking and Brendle and Schoen have led to a proof of the differentiable 1/4-pinching sphere theorem.
This text presents a graduate-level introduction to differential geometry for mathematics and physics students. The exposition follows the historical development of the concepts of connection and curvature with the goal of explaining the Chern–Weil theory of characteristic classes on a principal bundle. Along the way we encounter some of the high points in the history of differential geometry, for example, Gauss' Theorema Egregium and the Gauss–Bonnet theorem. Exercises throughout the book test the reader’s understanding of the material and sometimes illustrate extensions of the theory. Initially, the prerequisites for the reader include a passing familiarity with manifolds. After the first chapter, it becomes necessary to understand and manipulate differential forms. A knowledge of de Rham cohomology is required for the last third of the text. Prerequisite material is contained in author's text An Introduction to Manifolds, and can be learned in one semester. For the benefit of the reader and to establish common notations, Appendix A recalls the basics of manifold theory. Additionally, in an attempt to make the exposition more self-contained, sections on algebraic constructions such as the tensor product and the exterior power are included. Differential geometry, as its name implies, is the study of geometry using differential calculus. It dates back to Newton and Leibniz in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century, with the work of Gauss on surfaces and Riemann on the curvature tensor, that differential geometry flourished and its modern foundation was laid. Over the past one hundred years, differential geometry has proven indispensable to an understanding of the physical world, in Einstein's general theory of relativity, in the theory of gravitation, in gauge theory, and now in string theory. Differential geometry is also useful in topology, several complex variables, algebraic geometry, complex manifolds, and dynamical systems, among other fields. The field has even found applications to group theory as in Gromov's work and to probability theory as in Diaconis's work. It is not too far-fetched to argue that differential geometry should be in every mathematician's arsenal.
