Symmetry is one of the most important concepts in mathematics and physics. Emerging from the 2021 LMS-Bath Summer School, this book provides Ph.D. students and young researchers with some of the essential tools for the advanced study of symmetry. Illustrated with numerous examples, it explores some of the most exciting interactions between Dirac operators, K-theory and representation theory of real reductive groups. The final chapter provides a self-contained account of the representation theory of p-adic groups, from the very basics to an advanced perspective, with many arithmetic aspects.

Symmetry is one of the most important concepts in mathematics and physics. Emerging from the 2021 LMS-Bath Summer School, this book provides Ph.D. students and young researchers with some of the essential tools for the advanced study of symmetry. Illustrated with numerous examples, it explores some of the most exciting interactions between Dirac operators, K-theory and representation theory of real reductive groups. The final chapter provides a self-contained account of the representation theory of p-adic groups, from the very basics to an advanced perspective, with many arithmetic aspects.