Ever since the analogy between number fields and function fields was discovered, it has been a source of inspiration for new ideas, and a long history has not in any way detracted from the appeal of the subject.

As a deeper understanding of this analogy could have tremendous consequences, the search for a unified approach has become a sort of Holy Grail. The arrival of Arakelov''s new geometry that tries to put the archimedean places on a par with the finite ones gave a new impetus and led to spectacular success in Faltings'' hands. There are numerous further examples where ideas or techniques from the more geometrically-oriented world of function fields have led to new insights in the more arithmetically-oriented world of number fields, or vice versa.

These invited articles by leading researchers in the field explore various aspects of the parallel worlds of function fields and number fields. Topics range from Arakelov geometry, the search for a theory of varieties over the field with one element, via Eisenstein series to Drinfeld modules, and t-motives.

This volume is aimed at a wide audience of graduate students, mathematicians, and researchers interested in geometry and arithmetic and their connections.

Eugène Charles Catalan made his famous conjecture – that 8 and 9 are the only two consecutive perfect powers of natural numbers – in 1844 in a letter to the editor of Crelle’s mathematical journal. One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Preda Mihailescu proved it.

Catalan’s Conjecture presents this spectacular result in a way that is accessible to the advanced undergraduate. The author dissects both Mihailescu’s proof and the earlier work it made use of, taking great care to select streamlined and transparent versions of the arguments and to keep the text self-contained. Only in the proof of Thaine’s theorem is a little class field theory used; it is hoped that this application will motivate the interested reader to study the theory further.

Beautifully clear and concise, this book will appeal not only to specialists in number theory but to anyone interested in seeing the application of the ideas of algebraic number theory to a famous mathematical problem.

Ever since the analogy between number fields and function fields was discovered, it has been a source of inspiration for new ideas, and a long history has not in any way detracted from the appeal of the subject.

As a deeper understanding of this analogy could have tremendous consequences, the search for a unified approach has become a sort of Holy Grail. The arrival of Arakelov''s new geometry that tries to put the archimedean places on a par with the finite ones gave a new impetus and led to spectacular success in Faltings'' hands. There are numerous further examples where ideas or techniques from the more geometrically-oriented world of function fields have led to new insights in the more arithmetically-oriented world of number fields, or vice versa.

These invited articles by leading researchers in the field explore various aspects of the parallel worlds of function fields and number fields. Topics range from Arakelov geometry, the search for a theory of varieties over the field with one element, via Eisenstein series to Drinfeld modules, and t-motives.

This volume is aimed at a wide audience of graduate students, mathematicians, and researchers interested in geometry and arithmetic and their connections.

Eugène Charles Catalan made his famous conjecture – that 8 and 9 are the only two consecutive perfect powers of natural numbers – in 1844 in a letter to the editor of Crelle’s mathematical journal. One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Preda Mihailescu proved it.

Catalan’s Conjecture presents this spectacular result in a way that is accessible to the advanced undergraduate. The author dissects both Mihailescu’s proof and the earlier work it made use of, taking great care to select streamlined and transparent versions of the arguments and to keep the text self-contained. Only in the proof of Thaine’s theorem is a little class field theory used; it is hoped that this application will motivate the interested reader to study the theory further.

Beautifully clear and concise, this book will appeal not only to specialists in number theory but to anyone interested in seeing the application of the ideas of algebraic number theory to a famous mathematical problem.