W Nahm – författare

Over the last two decades, topological ideas have found increasingly more applications in quantum field theory. Topological field theories are the culmination of these developments, and they formed the dominating theme of the conference. The other focal point was two-dimensional quantum gravity. The participation of such leading mathematicians as M Atiyah, R Bott, G Segal, and I Singer, is a testmony to the deep interplay of mathematics and theoretical physics.

Over the last two decades, topological ideas have found increasingly more applications in quantum field theory. Topological field theories are the culmination of these developments, and they formed the dominating theme of the conference. The other focal point was two-dimensional quantum gravity. The participation of such leading mathematicians as M Atiyah, R Bott, G Segal, and I Singer, is a testmony to the deep interplay of mathematics and theoretical physics.

These lecture notes discusses the developments both in the theoretical understanding of the physics and mathematics of magnetic monopoles as well as the ways in which they can be detected experimentally.The subject has now become highly interdisciplinary and recent monopole meetings have attracted participants from low temperature physics at one extreme to cosmology at the other.