Elton P. Hsu – författare

This volume, with contributions by leading experts in the field, is a collection of lecture notes of the six mini courses given at the IAS/Park City Summer Mathematics Institute. It introduces advanced graduates and researchers in probability theory to several of the currently active research areas in the field. Each course is self-contained with references and contains basic materials and recent results. Topics include interacting particle systems, percolation theory, analysis on path and loop spaces, and mathematical finance. The volume gives a balanced overview of the current status of probability theory. An extensive bibliography for further study and research is included. This unique collection presents several important areas of current research and a valuable survey reflecting the diversity of the field.

Probability theory has become a convenient language and a useful tool in many areas of modern analysis. The main purpose of this book is to explore part of this connection concerning the relations between Brownian motion on a manifold and analytical aspects of differential geometry. A dominant theme of the book is the probabilistic interpretation of the curvature of a manifold.The book begins with a brief review of stochastic differential equations on Euclidean space. After presenting the basics of stochastic analysis on manifolds, the author introduces Brownian motion on a Riemannian manifold and studies the effect of curvature on its behavior. He then applies Brownian motion to geometric problems and vice versa, using many well-known examples, e.g., short-time behavior of the heat kernel on a manifold and probabilistic proofs of the Gauss-Bonnet-Chem theorem and the Atiyah-Singer index theorem for Dirac operators. The book concludes with an introduction to stochastic analysis on the path space over a Riemannian manifold.