Developments in Mathematics – serie

The legacy of Galois was the beginning of Galois theory as well as group theory. From this common origin, the development of group theory took its own course, which led to great advances in the latter half of the 20th cen­ tury. It was John Thompson who shaped finite group theory like no-one else, leading the way towards a major milestone of 20th century mathematics, the classification of finite simple groups. After the classification was announced around 1980, it was again J. Thomp­ son who led the way in exploring its implications for Galois theory. The first question is whether all simple groups occur as Galois groups over the rationals (and related fields), and secondly, how can this be used to show that all finite groups occur (the 'Inverse Problem of Galois Theory'). What are the implica­ tions for the stmcture and representations of the absolute Galois group of the rationals (and other fields)? Various other applications to algebra and number theory have been found, most prominently, to the theory of algebraic curves (e.g., the Guralnick-Thompson Conjecture on the Galois theory of covers of the Riemann sphere).

This volume, "Theory and Applications of Special Functions," is d- icated to Mizan Rahman in honoring him for the many important c- tributions to the theory of special functions that he has made over the years, and still continues to make. Some of the papers were presented at a special session of the American Mathematical Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in January 2003 organized by Mourad Ismail. Mizan Rahman's contributions are not only contained in his own - pers, but also indirectly in other papers for which he supplied useful and often essential information. We refer to the paper on his mathematics in this volume for more information. This paper contains some personal recollections and tries to describe Mizan Rahman's literary writings in his mother tongue, Bengali. An even more personal paper on Mizan Rahman is the letter by his sons, whom we thank for allowing us to reproduce it in this book. The theory of special functions is very much an application driven field of mathematics. This is a very old field, dating back to the 18th century when physicists and mathematician were looking for solutions of the fundamental differential equations of mathematical physics. Since then the field has grown enormously, and this book reflects only part of the known applications.

This volume contains papers by invited speakers of the symposium "Zeta Functions, Topology and Quantum Physics" held at Kinki U- versity in Osaka, Japan, during the period of March 3-6, 2003. The aims of this symposium were to establish mutual understanding and to exchange ideas among researchers working in various fields which have relation to zeta functions and zeta values. We are very happy to add this volume to the series Developments in Mathematics from Springer. In this respect, Professor Krishnaswami Alladi helped us a lot by showing his keen and enthusiastic interest in publishing this volume and by contributing his paper with Alexander Berkovich. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Kinki University. We would like to thank Professor Megumu Munakata, Vice-Rector of Kinki University, and Professor Nobuki Kawashima, Director of School of Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Engineering, Kinki Univ- sity, for their interest and support. We also thank John Martindale of Springer for his excellent editorial work.

Number Theory: Tradition and Modernization is a collection of survey and research papers on various topics in number theory. Though the topics and descriptive details appear varied, they are unified by two underlying principles: first, making everything readable as a book, and second, making a smooth transition from traditional approaches to modern ones by providing a rich array of examples.The chapters are presented in quite different in depth and cover a variety of descriptive details, but the underlying editorial principle enables the reader to have a unified glimpse of the developments of number theory. Thus, on the one hand, the traditional approach is presented in great detail, and on the other, the modernization of the methods in number theory is elaborated. The book emphasizes a few common features such as functional equations for various zeta-functions, modular forms, congruence conditions, exponential sums, and algorithmic aspects.

This text treats the classical theory of quadratic diophantine equations and guides the reader through the last two decades of computational techniques and progress in the area. The presentation features two basic methods to investigate and motivate the study of quadratic diophantine equations: the theories of continued fractions and quadratic fields. It also discusses Pell's equation and its generalizations, and presents some important quadratic diophantine equations and applications. The inclusion of examples makes this book useful for both research and classroom settings.

Number theory has a wealth of long-standing problems, the study of which over the years has led to major developments in many areas of mathematics. This volume consists of seven significant chapters on number theory and related topics. Written by distinguished mathematicians, key topics focus on multipartitions, congruences and identities (G. Andrews), the formulas of Koshliakov and Guinand in Ramanujan's Lost Notebook (B.C. Berndt, Y. Lee, and J. Sohn), alternating sign matrices and the Weyl character formulas (D.M. Bressoud), theta functions in complex analysis (H.M. Farkas), representation functions in additive number theory (M.B. Nathanson), and mock theta functions, ranks, and Maass forms (K. Ono), and elliptic functions (M. Waldschmidt).All of the surveys were outgrowths of featured talks given during the Special Year in Number Theory and Combinatorics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, 2004-2005, and describe major progress on a broad range of topics.This volume is intended for mathematicians and graduate students interested in number theory and related areas.

The contents of this volume range from expository papers on several aspects of number theory, intended for general readers (Steinhaus property of planar regions; experiments with computers; Diophantine approximation; number field sieve), to a collection of research papers for specialists, which are at prestigious journal level. Thus the book leads the reader in many ways not only to the state of the art of number theory but also to its rich garden. Audience: Researchers and graduate students interested in recent developments in number theory.

This is a graduate-level book aimed at experienced researchers as well as beginning graduate students in finite geometry, incidence geometry, design theory, coding theory and combinatorics. The 21 articles arise from the Fourth Isle of Thorns Conference on Finite Geometries, held in July 2000. The book contains new high-level results at the forefront of the field as well as authoritative surveys. The articles are written so that beginning graduate students can appreciate them. Among the surveys by the invited speakers are P.J. Cameron ("Fixed Points and cycles"), C.E. Praeger ("Implications of line-transitivity for designs"), B. Schmidt, ("Exponent bounds", which explains recent results on difference sets), and several papers with H. Van Maideghem as co-author on generalized polygons. The editors also contribute: A. Blokhuis, D. Jungnickel, and B. Schmidt ("On a class of symmetric divisible designs which are almost projective planes"), and D. Luyckx and J.A. Thas discuss the geometry of the quadric in six dimensions. There is also a lengthy and complete survey by J.W.P. Hirschfeld and L.Storme ("The packing problem in statistics, coding theory and finite projective spaces: update 2001"). Researchers as well as beginning graduate students in the areas of finite geometry, incidence geometry, design theory, coding theory and combinatorics should appreciate the surveys and original papers by leaders in these fields.

This volume contains a collection of papers in analytic and elementary number theory in memory of Professor Paul Erdos, one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century. Written by many leading researchers, the papers deal with advances in a wide variety of topics, including arithmetical functions, prime numbers, the Riemann zeta function, probabilistic number theory, properties of integer sequences, modular forms, partitions, and q-series. The text should be of interest to researchers and students of number theory, analysis, combinatorics and modular forms.

This volume contains research and expository papers in a number of different topics including number theory, special functions, physics and combinatorics. A subject that is common to all of these fields is q-series. The chapters contain some of the latest developments in the fields of q-series. Some of the papers describe how symbolic computation has aided these developments. This volume is intended for researchers and graduate students interested in recent developments in q-series and symbolic computation.

The problem of representing an integer as a sum of squares of integers is one of the oldest and most significant in mathematics. It goes back at least 2000 years to Diophantus, and continues more recently with the works of Fermat, Euler, Lagrange, Jacobi, Glaisher, Ramanujan, Hardy, Mordell, Andrews, and others. Jacobi's elliptic function approach dates from his epic "Fundamenta Nova" of 1829. Here, the author employs his combinatorial/elliptic function methods to derive many infinite families of explicit exact formulas involving either squares or triangular numbers, two of which generalize Jacobi's (1829) 4 and 8 squares identities to 4n2 or 4n(n+1) squares, respectively, without using cusp forms such as those of Glaisher or Ramanujan for 16 and 24 squares. The author derives his formulas by utilizing combinatorics to combine a variety of methods and observations from the theory of Jacobi elliptic functions, continued fractions, Hankel or Turanian determinants, Lie algebras, Schur functions, and multiple basic hypergeometric series related to the classical groups. His results (in Theorem 5.19) generalize to separate infinite families each of the 21 of Jacobi's explicitly stated degree 2, 4, 6, 8 Lambert series expansions of classical theta functions in sections 40-42 of the Fundamental Nova. The author also uses a special case of his methods to give a derivation proof of the two Kac and Wakimoto (1994) conjectured identities concerning representations of a positive integer by sums of 4n2 or 4n(n+1) triangular numbers, respectively. These conjectures arose in the study of Lie algebras and have also been proved by Zagier using modular forms.

The book includes several survey articles on prime numbers, divisor problems, and Diophantine equations, as well as research papers on various aspects of analytic number theory such as additive problems, Diophantine approximations and the theory of zeta and L-function. Audience: Researchers and graduate students interested in recent development of number theory.

This publication surveys some of the disciplines within ordered algebraic structures and also contains chapters highlighting a broad spectrum of research interests. In all, this book represents a reasonably accurate cross-section of the state of the art in ordered algebraic structures.

This book contains various topics in number theory and provides the reader with an overvierw of current and future researches in the field. Audience: Researchers and graduate students in number theory, enthusiastic amateurs and undergraduate students who have some basic knowledge in mathematics.

This is an introductory volume on the theory of basic Fourier series, a contemporary research area in classical analysis and q-series. This research utilizes approximation theory, orthogonal polynomials, analytic functions, and numerical methods to study the branch of q-special functions dealing with basic analogs of Fourier series and its applications. This theory has interesting applications and connections to general orthogonal basic hypergeometric functions, a q-analog of zeta function, and, possibly, quantum groups and mathematical physics.

Robert A. Rankin, one of the world's foremost authorities on modular forms and a founding editor of The Ramanujan Journal, died on January 27, 2001, at the age of 85. Rankin had broad interests and contributed fundamental papers in a wide variety of areas within number theory, geometry, analysis, and algebra. To commemorate Rankin's life and work, the editors have collected together 25 papers by several eminent mathematicians reflecting Rankin's extensive range of interests within number theory. Many of these papers reflect Rankin's primary focus in modular forms. It is the editors' fervent hope that mathematicians will be stimulated by these papers and gain a greater appreciation for Rankin's contributions to mathematics. This volume would be an inspiration to students and researchers in the areas of number theory and modular forms.

This volume is an outgrowth of the research project "The Inverse Ga­ lois Problem and its Application to Number Theory" which was carried out in three academic years from 1999 to 2001 with the support of the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (1) No. 11440013. In September, 2001, an international conference "Galois Theory and Modular Forms" was held at Tokyo Metropolitan University after some preparatory work­ shops and symposia in previous years. The title of this book came from that of the conference, and the authors were participants of those meet­ All of the articles here were critically refereed by experts. Some of ings. these articles give well prepared surveys on branches of research areas, and many articles aim to bear the latest research results accompanied with carefully written expository introductions. When we started our re~earch project, we picked up three areas to investigate under the key word "Galois groups"; namely, "generic poly­ nomials" to be applied to number theory, "Galois coverings of algebraic curves" to study new type of representations of absolute Galois groups, and explicitly described "Shimura varieties" to understand well the Ga­ lois structures of some interesting polynomials including Brumer's sextic for the alternating group of degree 5. The topics of the articles in this volume are widely spread as a result. At a first glance, some readers may think this book somewhat unfocussed.

Let N be the set of nonnegative integers. A numerical semigroup is a nonempty subset S of N that is closed under addition, contains the zero element, and whose complement in N is ?nite. If n ,...,n are positive integers with gcd{n ,...,n } = 1, then the set hn ,..., 1 e 1 e 1 n i = {? n +··· + ? n | ? ,...,? ? N} is a numerical semigroup. Every numer e 1 1 e e 1 e ical semigroup is of this form. The simplicity of this concept makes it possible to state problems that are easy to understand but whose resolution is far from being trivial. This fact attracted several mathematicians like Frobenius and Sylvester at the end of the 19th century. This is how for instance the Frobenius problem arose, concerned with ?nding a formula depending on n ,...,n for the largest integer not belonging to hn ,...,n i (see [52] 1 e 1 e for a nice state of the art on this problem).

Althoughsubmanifoldscomplexmanifoldshasbeenanactive?eldofstudyfor many years, in some sense this area is not su?ciently covered in the current literature. This text deals with the CR submanifolds of complex manifolds, with particular emphasis on CR submanifolds of complex projective space, and it covers the topics which are necessary for learning the basic properties of these manifolds. We are aware that it is impossible to give a complete overview of these submanifolds, but we hope that these notes can serve as an introduction to their study. We present the fundamental de?nitions and results necessary for reaching the frontiers of research in this ?eld. There are many monographs dealing with some current interesting topics in di?erential geometry, but most of these are written as encyclopedias, or research monographs, gathering recent results and giving the readers ample usefulinformationaboutthetopics. Therefore, thesekindsofmonographsare attractive to specialists in di?erential geometry and related ?elds and acce- able to professional di?erential geometers. However, for graduate students who are less advanced in di?erential geometry, these texts might be hard to read without assistance from their instructors. By contrast, the general philosophy of this book is to begin with the elementary facts about complex manifolds and their submanifolds, give some details and proofs, and introduce the reader to the study of CR submanifolds of complex manifolds; especially complex projective space. It includes only a few original results with precise proofs, while the others are cited in the reference list.

Number theory has a wealth of long-standing problems, the study of which over the years has led to major developments in many areas of mathematics. This volume consists of seven significant chapters on number theory and related topics. Written by distinguished mathematicians, key topics focus on multipartitions, congruences and identities (G. Andrews), the formulas of Koshliakov and Guinand in Ramanujan's Lost Notebook (B.C. Berndt, Y. Lee, and J. Sohn), alternating sign matrices and the Weyl character formulas (D.M. Bressoud), theta functions in complex analysis (H.M. Farkas), representation functions in additive number theory (M.B. Nathanson), and mock theta functions, ranks, and Maass forms (K. Ono), and elliptic functions (M. Waldschmidt).All of the surveys were outgrowths of featured talks given during the Special Year in Number Theory and Combinatorics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, 2004-2005, and describe major progress on a broad range of topics.This volume is intended for mathematicians and graduate students interested in number theory and related areas.

The theme of this book are the interactions between group theory and algebra/geometry/number theory, showing ubiquity and power of the basic principle of Galois theory. The book presents recent developments in a major line of work about covers of the projective line (and other curves), their fields of definition and parameter spaces, and associated questions about arithmetic fundamental groups. This is intimately tied up with the Inverse Problem of Galois Theory, and uses methods of algebraic geometry, group theory and number theory.

This volume, "Theory and Applications of Special Functions," is d- icated to Mizan Rahman in honoring him for the many important c- tributions to the theory of special functions that he has made over the years, and still continues to make. Some of the papers were presented at a special session of the American Mathematical Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in January 2003 organized by Mourad Ismail. Mizan Rahman's contributions are not only contained in his own - pers, but also indirectly in other papers for which he supplied useful and often essential information. We refer to the paper on his mathematics in this volume for more information. This paper contains some personal recollections and tries to describe Mizan Rahman's literary writings in his mother tongue, Bengali. An even more personal paper on Mizan Rahman is the letter by his sons, whom we thank for allowing us to reproduce it in this book. The theory of special functions is very much an application driven field of mathematics. This is a very old field, dating back to the 18th century when physicists and mathematician were looking for solutions of the fundamental differential equations of mathematical physics. Since then the field has grown enormously, and this book reflects only part of the known applications.

This volume focuses on various aspects of zeta functions: multiple zeta values, Ohno's relations, the Riemann hypothesis, L-functions, polylogarithms, and their interplay with other disciplines. Eleven articles on recent advances are written by outstanding experts in the above-mentioned fields. Each article starts with an introductory survey leading to the exciting new research developments accomplished by the contributors. This book will become the major standard reference on the recent advances on zeta functions.

Number Theory: Tradition and Modernization is a collection of survey and research papers on various topics in number theory. Though the topics and descriptive details appear varied, they are unified by two underlying principles: first, making everything readable as a book, and second, making a smooth transition from traditional approaches to modern ones by providing a rich array of examples.The chapters are presented in quite different in depth and cover a variety of descriptive details, but the underlying editorial principle enables the reader to have a unified glimpse of the developments of number theory. Thus, on the one hand, the traditional approach is presented in great detail, and on the other, the modernization of the methods in number theory is elaborated. The book emphasizes a few common features such as functional equations for various zeta-functions, modular forms, congruence conditions, exponential sums, and algorithmic aspects.

The contents of this volume range from expository papers on several aspects of number theory, intended for general readers (Steinhaus property of planar regions; Audience: Researchers and graduate students interested in recent developments in number theory.

This volume contains a collection of papers in Analytic and Elementary Number Theory in memory of Professor Paul Erdös, one of the greatest mathematicians of this century. Written by many leading researchers, the papers deal with the most recent advances in a wide variety of topics, including arithmetical functions, prime numbers, the Riemann zeta function, probabilistic number theory, properties of integer sequences, modular forms, partitions, and q-series. Audience: Researchers and students of number theory, analysis, combinatorics and modular forms will find this volume to be stimulating.

The problem of representing an integer as a sum of squares of integers is one of the oldest and most significant in mathematics. It goes back at least 2000 years to Diophantus, and continues more recently with the works of Fermat, Euler, Lagrange, Jacobi, Glaisher, Ramanujan, Hardy, Mordell, Andrews, and others. Jacobi's elliptic function approach dates from his epic Fundamenta Nova of 1829. Here, the author employs his combinatorial/elliptic function methods to derive many infinite families of explicit exact formulas involving either squares or triangular numbers, two of which generalize Jacobi's (1829) 4 and 8 squares identities to 4n2 or 4n(n+1) squares, respectively, without using cusp forms such as those of Glaisher or Ramanujan for 16 and 24 squares. These results depend upon new expansions for powers of various products of classical theta functions. This is the first time that infinite families of non-trivial exact explicit formulas for sums of squares have been found. The author derives his formulas by utilizing combinatorics to combine a variety of methods and observations from the theory of Jacobi elliptic functions, continued fractions, Hankel or Turanian determinants, Lie algebras, Schur functions, and multiple basic hypergeometric series related to the classical groups. His results (in Theorem 5.19) generalize to separate infinite families each of the 21 of Jacobi's explicitly stated degree 2, 4, 6, 8 Lambert series expansions of classical theta functions in sections 40-42 of the Fundamental Nova. The author also uses a special case of his methods to give a derivation proof of the two Kac and Wakimoto (1994) conjectured identities concerning representations of a positive integer by sums of 4n2 or 4n(n+1) triangular numbers, respectively. These conjectures arose in the study of Lie algebras and have also recently been proved by Zagierusing modular forms. George Andrews says in a preface of this book, `This impressive work will undoubtedly spur others both in elliptic functions and in modular forms to build on these wonderful discoveries.' Audience: This research monograph on sums of squares is distinguished by its diversity of methods and extensive bibliography. It contains both detailed proofs and numerous explicit examples of the theory. This readable work will appeal to both students and researchers in number theory, combinatorics, special functions, classical analysis, approximation theory, and mathematical physics.

The book includes several survey articles on prime numbers, divisor problems, and Diophantine equations, as well as research papers on various aspects of analytic number theory such as additive problems, Diophantine approximations and the theory of zeta and L-function.Audience: Researchers and graduate students interested in recent development of number theory.

This publication surveys some of the disciplines within ordered algebraic structures and also contains chapters highlighting a broad spectrum of research interests. In all, this book represents a reasonably accurate cross-section of the state of the art in ordered algebraic structures.