Clay Mathematics Proceedings – serie

String theory, sometimes called the 'Theory of Everything', has the potential to provide answers to key questions involving quantum gravity, black holes, super symmetry, cosmology, singularities and the symmetries of nature. This multi-authored book summarizes the latest results across all areas of string theory from the perspective of world-renowned experts, including Michael Green, David Gross, Stephen Hawking, John Schwarz, Edward Witten and others.The book comes out of the 'Strings 2001' conference, organized by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, India), the Abdus Salam ICTP (Trieste, Italy), and the Clay Mathematics Institute (Cambridge, MA, USA). Individual articles discuss the study of D-branes, black holes, string dualities, compactifications, Calabi-Yau manifolds, conformal field non commutativemutative field theory, string field theory, and string phenomenology. Numerous references provide a path to previous findings and results. Written for physicists and mathematicians interested in string theory, the volume is a useful resource for any graduate student or researcher working in string theory, quantum field theory, or related areas.

In the Summer of 2001, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) hosted the Clay Mathematics Institute Summer School on the Global Theory of Minimal Surfaces. During that time, MSRI became the world center for the study of minimal surfaces: 150 mathematicians - undergraduates, post-doctoral students, young researchers, and world experts - participated in the most extensive meeting ever held on the subject in its 250-year history.The unusual nature of the meeting made it possible to put together this collection of expository lectures and specialized reports, giving a panoramic view of a vital subject presented by leading researchers in the field. The subjects covered include minimal and constant-mean-curvature submanifolds, geometric measure theory and the double-bubble conjecture, Lagrangian geometry, numerical simulation of geometric phenomena, applications of mean curvature to general relativity and Riemannian geometry, the isoperimetric problem, the geometry of fully nonlinear elliptic equations and applications to the topology of three-dimensional manifolds. The wide variety of topics covered make this volume suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in differential geometry.

This volume is the proceedings of the 2002 Clay Mathematics Institute School on Geometry and String Theory. This month-long program was held at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, England, and was organized by both mathematicians and physicists: A Corti, R. Dijkgraaf, M. Douglas, J. Gauntlett, M. Gross, C. Hull, A. Jaffe and M. Reid. The early part of the school had many lectures that introduced various concepts of algebraic geometry and string theory with a focus on improving communication between these two fields. During the latter part of the program there were also a number of research level talks.This volume contains a selection of expository and research articles by lecturers at the school and highlights some of the current interests of researchers working at the interface between string theory and algebraic geometry. The topics covered include manifolds of special holonomy, supergravity, supersymmetry, D-branes, the McKay correspondence and the Fourier-Mukai transform. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in relations between mathematical physics and algebraic geometry.

Mathematical gauge theory studies connections on principal bundles, or, more precisely, the solution spaces of certain partial differential equations for such connections. Historically, these equations have come from mathematical physics, and play an important role in the description of the electro-weak and strong nuclear forces. The use of gauge theory as a tool for studying topological properties of four-manifolds was pioneered by the fundamental work of Simon Donaldson in the early 1980s, and was revolutionized by the introduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations in the mid-1990s. Since the birth of the subject, it has retained its close connection with symplectic topology.The analogy between these two fields of study was further underscored by Andreas Floer's construction of an infinite-dimensional variant of Morse theory that applies in two a priori different contexts: either to define symplectic invariants for pairs of Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold, or to define topological invariants for three-manifolds, which fit into a framework for calculating invariants for smooth four-manifolds. 'Heegaard Floer homology', the recently-discovered invariant for three- and four-manifolds, comes from an application of Lagrangian Floer homology to spaces associated to Heegaard diagrams. Although this theory is conjecturally isomorphic to Seiberg-Witten theory, it is more topological and combinatorial in flavor and thus easier to work with in certain contexts.The interaction between gauge theory, low-dimensional topology, and symplectic geometry has led to a number of striking new developments in these fields. The aim of this volume is to introduce graduate students and researchers in other fields to some of these exciting developments, with a special emphasis on the very fruitful interplay between disciplines. This volume is based on lecture courses and advanced seminars given at the 2004 Clay Mathematics Institute Summer School at the Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, Hungary. Several of the authors have added a considerable amount of additional material to that presented at the school, and the resulting volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to current research, covering material from Heegaard Floer homology, contact geometry, smooth four-manifold topology, and symplectic four-manifolds.

In June 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute organized an Instructional Symposium on Noncommutative Geometry in conjunction with the AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference. These events were held at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts from June 18 to 29, 2000. The Instructional Symposium consisted of several series of expository lectures which were intended to introduce key topics in noncommutative geometry to mathematicians unfamiliar with the subject.Those expository lectures have been edited and are reproduced in this volume. The lectures of Rosenberg and Weinberger discuss various applications of noncommutative geometry to problems in 'ordinary' geometry and topology. The lectures of Lagarias and Tretkoff discuss the Riemann hypothesis and the possible application of the methods of noncommutative geometry in number theory. Higson gives an account of the 'residue index theorem' of Connes and Moscovici. Noncommutative geometry is to an unusual extent the creation of a single mathematician, Alain Connes. The present volume gives an extended introduction to several aspects of Connes' work in this fascinating area.

Articles in this volume are based on talks given at the Gauss-Dirichlet Conference held in Gottingen on June 20-24, 2005. The conference commemorated the 150th anniversary of the death of C.-F. Gauss and the 200th anniversary of the birth of J.-L. Dirichlet. The volume begins with a definitive summary of the life and work of Dirichlet and continues with thirteen papers by leading experts on research topics of current interest in number theory that were directly influenced by Gauss and Dirichlet. Among the topics are the distribution of primes (long arithmetic progressions of primes and small gaps between primes), class groups of binary quadratic forms, various aspects of the theory of $L$-functions, the theory of modular forms, and the study of rational and integral solutions to polynomial equations in several variables. Information for our distributors: Titles in this series are co-published with the Clay Mathematics Institute (Cambridge, MA).

This book is based on survey lectures given at the 2006 Clay Summer School on Arithmetic Geometry at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Gottingen. Intended for graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s, this volume will introduce readers to modern techniques and outstanding conjectures at the interface of number theory and algebraic geometry. The main focus is rational points on algebraic varieties over non-algebraically closed fields. Do they exist? If not, can this be proven efficiently and algorithmically? When rational points do exist, are they finite in number and can they be found effectively? When there are infinitely many rational points, how are they distributed? For curves, a cohesive theory addressing these questions has emerged in the last few decades. Highlights include Faltings' finiteness theorem and Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Key techniques are drawn from the theory of elliptic curves, including modular curves and parametrizations, Heegner points, and heights. The arithmetic of higher-dimensional varieties is equally rich, offering a complex interplay of techniques including Shimura varieties, the minimal model program, moduli spaces of curves and maps, deformation theory, Galois cohomology, harmonic analysis, and automorphic functions. However, many foundational questions about the structure of rational points remain open, and research tends to focus on properties of specific classes of varieties.

Examines algebraic cyclesand the impact they have had on a variety of fields of mathematics, including number theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics. It contains a mixture of research papers and expository articles, and will be of interest to both experts and beginners in the field.

The work of Alain Connes has cut a wide swath across several areas of mathematics and physics. Reflecting its broad spectrum and profound impact on the contemporary mathematical landscape, this collection of articles covers a wealth of topics at the forefront of research in operator algebras, analysis, noncommutative geometry, topology, number theory and physics.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of a conference, “On Certain L-functions”, held July 23-27, 2007 at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. The conference was organised in honour of the 60th birthday of Freydoon Shahidi, widely recognised as having made groundbreaking contributions to the Langlands programme.The articles in this volume represent a snapshot of the state of the field from several viewpoints. Contributions illuminate various areas of the study of geometric, analytic, and number theoretic aspects of automorphic forms and their L-functions, and both local and global theory are addressed.Topics discussed in the articles include Langlands functoriality, the Rankin-Selberg method, the Langlands-Shahidi method, motivic Galois groups, Shimura varieties, orbital integrals, representations of p-adic groups, Plancherel formula and its consequences, the Gross-Prasad conjecture, and more. The volume also includes an expository article on Shahidi's contributions to the field, which serves as an introduction to the subject.Experts will find this book a useful reference, and beginning researchers will be able to use it to survey major results in the Langlands programme.

This collection of cutting-edge articles on vector bundles and related topics originated from a CMI workshop, held in October 2006, that brought together a community indebted to the pioneering work of P. E. Newstead, visiting the United States for the first time since the 1960s. Moduli spaces of vector bundles were then in their infancy, but are now, as demonstrated by this volume, a powerful tool in symplectic geometry, number theory, mathematical physics, and algebraic geometry. In fact, the impetus for this volume was to offer a sample of the vital convergence of techniques and fundamental progress, taking place in moduli spaces at the outset of the twenty-first century. This volume contains contributions by J. E. Andersen and N. L. Gammelgaard (Hitchin's projectively flat connection and Toeplitz operators), M. Aprodu and G. Farkas (moduli spaces), D. Arcara and A. Bertram (stability in higher dimension), L. Jeffrey (intersection cohomology), J. Kamnitzer (Langlands program), M. Lieblich (arithmetic aspects), P. E. Newstead (coherent systems), G. Pareschi and M. Popa (linear series on Abelian varieties), and M. Teixidor i Bigas (bundles over reducible curves). These articles do require a working knowledge of algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry and functional analysis, but should appeal to practitioners in a diversity of fields. No specialization should be necessary to appreciate the contributions, or possibly to be stimulated to work in the various directions opened by these path-blazing ideas; to mention a few, the Langlands program, stability criteria for vector bundles over surfaces and threefolds, linear series over abelian varieties and Brauer groups in relation to arithmetic properties of moduli spaces.

This volume is a collection of notes from lectures given at the 2008 Clay Mathematics Institute Summer School, held in Zurich, Switzerland. The lectures were designed for graduate students and mathematicians within five years of the Ph.D., and the main focus of the programme was on recent progress in the theory of evolution equations. Such equations lie at the heart of many areas of mathematical physics and arise not only in situations with a manifest time evolution (such as linear and nonlinear wave and Schrodinger equations) but also in the high energy or semi-classical limits of elliptic problems. The three main courses presented focused mainly on microlocal analysis and spectral and scattering theory, the theory of the nonlinear Schrodinger and wave equations, and evolution problems in general relativity. These major topics were supplemented by several mini-courses on the derivation of effective evolution equations from microscopic quantum dynamics, on wave maps with and without symmetries, on quantum N-body scattering, diffraction of waves, and symmetric spaces, and on nonlinear Schrodinger equations at critical regularity. Although highly detailed treatments of some of these topics are now available in the published literature, in this collection the reader can learn the fundamental ideas and tools with a minimum of technical machinery. Moreover, the treatment in this volume emphasises common themes and techniques in the field, including exact and approximate conservation laws, energy methods, and positive commutator arguments.

This volume is a collection of lecture notes for six of the ten courses given in Buzios, Brazil by prominent probabilists at the 2010 Clay Mathematics Institute Summer School, ``Probability and Statistical Physics in Two and More Dimensions'' and at the XIV Brazilian School of Probability. In the past ten to fifteen years, various areas of probability theory related to statistical physics, disordered systems and combinatorics have undergone intensive development. A number of these developments deal with two-dimensional random structures at their critical points, and provide new tools and ways of coping with at least some of the limitations of Conformal Field Theory that had been so successfully developed in the theoretical physics community to understand phase transitions of two-dimensional systems. Included in this selection are detailed accounts of all three foundational courses presented at the Clay school--Schramm-Loewner Evolution and other Conformally Invariant Objects, Noise Sensitivity and Percolation, Scaling Limits of Random Trees and Planar Maps--together with contributions on Fractal and Multifractal properties of SLE and Conformal Invariance of Lattice Models. Finally, the volume concludes with extended articles based on the courses on Random Polymers and Self-Avoiding Walks given at the Brazilian School of Probability during the final week of the school. Together, these notes provide a panoramic, state-of-the-art view of probability theory areas related to statistical physics, disordered systems and combinatorics. Like the lectures themselves, they are oriented towards advanced students and postdocs, but experts should also find much of interest.

Resolution of Singularities has long been considered as being a difficult to access area of mathematics. The more systematic and simpler proofs that have appeared in the last few years in zero characteristic now give us a much better understanding of singularities. They reveal the aesthetics of both the logical structure of the proof and the various methods used in it. The present volume is intended for readers who are not yet experts but always wondered about the intricacies of resolution. As such, it provides a gentle and quite comprehensive introduction to this amazing field. The book may tempt the reader to enter more deeply into a topic where many mysteries - especially the positive characteristic case - await to be disclosed.

This volume resulted from the conference A Celebration of Algebraic Geometry, which was held at Harvard University from August 25-28, 2011, in honour of Joe Harris' 60th birthday. Harris is famous around the world for his lively textbooks and enthusiastic teaching, as well as for his seminal research contributions. The articles are written in this spirit: clear, original, engaging, enlivened by examples, and accessible to young mathematicians. The articles in this volume focus on the moduli space of curves and more general varieties, commutative algebra, invariant theory, enumerative geometry both classical and modern, rationally connected and Fano varieties, Hodge theory and abelian varieties, and Calabi-Yau and hyperkahler manifolds. Taken together, they present a comprehensive view of the long frontier of current knowledge in algebraic geometry.