Differential Geometry

Loring W. Tu was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and grew up in Taiwan, Canada, and the United States. He attended McGill and Princeton as an undergraduate, and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University under the supervision of Phillip A. Griffiths. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at Johns Hopkins University, and is currently Professor of Mathematics at Tufts University. An algebraic geometer by training, he has done research at the interface of algebraic geometry, topology, and differential geometry, including Hodge theory, degeneracy loci, moduli spaces of vector bundles, and equivariant cohomology. He is the coauthor with Raoul Bott of Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology and the author of An Introduction to Manifolds.

“The textbook is a concise and well organized treatment of characteristic classes on principal bundles. It is characterized by a right balance between rigor and simplicity. It should be in every mathematician's arsenal and take its place in any mathematical library.” (Nabil L. Youssef, zbMATH 1383.53001, 2018)

• Preface.- Chapter 1. Curvature and Vector Fields.- 1. Riemannian Manifolds.- 2. Curves.- 3. Surfaces in Space.- 4. Directional Derivative in Euclidean Space.- 5. The Shape Operator.- 6. Affine Connections.- 7. Vector Bundles.- 8. Gauss's Theorema Egregium.- 9. Generalizations to Hypersurfaces in Rn+1.- Chapter 2. Curvature and Differential Forms.- 10. Connections on a Vector Bundle.- 11. Connection, Curvature, and Torsion Forms.- 12. The Theorema Egregium Using Forms.- Chapter 3. Geodesics.- 13. More on Affine Connections.- 14. Geodesics.- 15. Exponential Maps.- 16. Distance and Volume.- 17. The Gauss-Bonnet Theorem.- Chapter 4. Tools from Algebra and Topology.- 18. The Tensor Product and the Dual Module.- 19. The Exterior Power.- 20. Operations on Vector Bundles.- 21. Vector-Valued Forms.- Chapter 5. Vector Bundles and Characteristic Classes.- 22. Connections and Curvature Again.- 23. Characteristic Classes.- 24. Pontrjagin Classes.- 25. The Euler Class and Chern Classes.- 26. Some Applications of Characteristic Classes.- Chapter 6. Principal Bundles and Characteristic Classes.- 27. Principal Bundles.- 28. Connections on a Principal Bundle.- 29. Horizontal Distributions on a Frame Bundle.- 30. Curvature on a Principal Bundle.- 31. Covariant Derivative on a Principal Bundle.- 32. Character Classes of Principal Bundles.- A. Manifolds.- B. Invariant Polynomials.- Hints and Solutions to Selected End-of-Section Problems.- List of Notations.- References.- Index.