Nik Weaver - Böcker

With a unique approach and presenting an array of new and intriguing topics, Mathematical Quantization offers a survey of operator algebras and related structures from the point of view that these objects are quantizations of classical mathematical structures. This approach makes possible, with minimal mathematical detail, a unified treatment of a variety of topics.Detailed here for the first time, the fundamental idea of mathematical quantization is that sets are replaced by Hilbert spaces. Building on this idea, and most importantly on the fact that scalar-valued functions on a set correspond to operators on a Hilbert space, one can determine quantum analogs of a variety of classical structures. In particular, because topologies and measure classes on a set can be treated in terms of scalar-valued functions, we can transfer these constructions to the quantum realm, giving rise to C*- and von Neumann algebras.In the first half of the book, the author quickly builds the operator algebra setting. He uses this as a unifying theme in the second half, in which he treats several active research topics, some for the first time in book form. These include the quantum plane and tori, operator spaces, Hilbert modules, Lipschitz algebras, and quantum groups.For graduate students, Mathematical Quantization offers an ideal introduction to a research area of great current interest. For professionals in operator algebras and functional analysis, it provides a readable tour of the current state of the field.

The Lipschitz algebras Lip(M), for M a complete metric space, are quite analogous to the spaces C(Ω) and L∞(X), for Ω a compact Hausdorff space and X a σ-finite measure space. Although the Lipschitz algebras have not been studied as thoroughly as these better-known cousins, it is becoming increasingly clear that they play a fundamental role in functional analysis, and are also useful in many applications, especially in the direction of metric geometry. This book gives a comprehensive treatment of (what is currently known about) the beautiful theory of these algebras.

This book provides an introduction to measure theory and functional analysis suitable for a beginning graduate course, and is based on notes the author had developed over several years of teaching such a course. It is unique in placing special emphasis on the separable setting, which allows for a simultaneously more detailed and more elementary exposition, and for its rapid progression into advanced topics in the spectral theory of families of self-adjoint operators. The author's notion of measurable Hilbert bundles is used to give the spectral theorem a particularly elegant formulation not to be found in other textbooks on the subject.

Ever since Paul Cohen's spectacular use of the forcing concept to prove the independence of the continuum hypothesis from the standard axioms of set theory, forcing has been seen by the general mathematical community as a subject of great intrinsic interest but one that is technically so forbidding that it is only accessible to specialists. In the past decade, a series of remarkable solutions to long-standing problems in C*-algebra using set-theoretic methods, many achieved by the author and his collaborators, have generated new interest in this subject. This is the first book aimed at explaining forcing to general mathematicians. It simultaneously makes the subject broadly accessible by explaining it in a clear, simple manner, and surveys advanced applications of set theory to mainstream topics.

Ever since Paul Cohen's spectacular use of the forcing concept to prove the independence of the continuum hypothesis from the standard axioms of set theory, forcing has been seen by the general mathematical community as a subject of great intrinsic interest but one that is technically so forbidding that it is only accessible to specialists. In the past decade, a series of remarkable solutions to long-standing problems in C*-algebra using set-theoretic methods, many achieved by the author and his collaborators, have renewed interest in this subject. This is the first book aimed at explaining forcing to general mathematicians. It simultaneously makes the subject broadly accessible by explaining it in a clear, simple manner, and surveys advanced applications of set theory to mainstream topics.

The book is a research monograph on the notions of truth and assertibility as they relate to the foundations of mathematics. It is aimed at a general mathematical and philosophical audience. The central novelty is an axiomatic treatment of the concept of assertibility. This provides us with a device that can be used to handle difficulties that have plagued philosophical logic for over a century. Two examples relate to Frege's formulation of second-order logic and Tarski's characterization of truth predicates for formal languages. Both are widely recognized as fundamental advances, but both are also seen as being seriously flawed: Frege's system, as Russell showed, is inconsistent, and Tarski's definition fails to capture the compositionality of truth. A formal assertibility predicate can be used to repair both problems. The repairs are technically interesting and conceptually compelling. The approach in this book will be of interest not only for the uses the author has put it to, but also as a flexible tool that may have many more applications in logic and the foundations of mathematics.