Oxford Mathematical Monographs – serie

In topology the three basic concepts of metrics, topologies and uniformities have been treated so far as separate entities by means of different methods and terminology. This is the first book to treat all three concepts as a special case of the concept of approach spaces. This theory provides an answer to natural questions in the interplay between topological and metric spaces by introducing a uniquely well suited supercategory of TOP and MET. The book explains the richness of approach structures in great detail; it provides a comprehensive explanation of the categorical set-up, develops the basic theory and provides many examples, displaying links with various areas of mathematics such as approximation theory, probability theory, analysis and hyperspace theory.

A Kleinian group is a discrete subgroup of the isometry group of hyperbolic 3-space, which is also regarded as a subgroup of Möbius transformations in the complex plane. The present book is a comprehensive guide to theories of Kleinian groups from the viewpoints of hyperbolic geometry and complex analysis. After 1960, Ahlfors and Bers were the leading researchers of Kleinian groups and helped it to become an active area of complex analysis as a branch of Teichmüller theory. Later, Thurston brought a revolution to this area with his profound investigation of hyperbolic manifolds, and at the same time complex dynamical approach was strongly developed by Sullivan. This book provides fundamental results and important theorems which are needed for access to the frontiers of the theory from a modern viewpoint.

This book is devoted to the theory of topological dynamics of random dynamical systems. The theory of random dynamical systems is a relatively new and fast expanding field of research which attracts the attention of researchers from various fields of science. It unites and develops the classical deterministic theory of dynamical systems and probability theory, hence finding many applications in a very wide range of disciplines from physics to biology to engineering, finance, and economics. Recent developments call for a systematic presentation of the theory. Topological dynamics of random dynamical systems is the first book to deal with the theory of topological dynamics of random dynamical systems. It presents in detail the solutions to the most fundamental problems of topological dynamics: linearization of nonlinear smooth systems, classification, and structural stability of linear hyperbolic systems. Employing the tools and methods of algebraic ergodic theory, the theory presented in the book has surprisingly beautiful results showing the richness of random dynamical systems as well as giving a gentle generalization of the classical deterministic theory. Mathematicians working in the theory of dynamical systems, stochastic dynamics, as well as those interested in applications of mathematical systems with random noise, will find this timely book a valuable reference and rich source of modern mathematical results and methods.

The thermodynamic limit is a mathematical technique which allows us to consider crystals (or other macroscopic objects) as infinitely sized periodically arranged molecules. This means that we can derive models in solid state physics from models in quantum chemistry. Based on this technique, the book presents established as well as new mathematical results for a large class of models in quantum chemistry.

Summability is a mathematical topic with a long tradition and many applications in, for example, function theory, number theory, and stochastics. It was originally based on classical analytical methods, but was strongly influenced by modern functional analytical methods during the last seven decades. The present book aims to introduce the reader to the wide field of summability and its applications, and provides an overview of the most important classical and modern methods used. Part I contains a short general introduction to summability, the basic classical theory concerning mainly inclusion theorems and theorems of the Silverman-Toeplitz type, a presentation of the most important classes of summability methods, Tauberian theorems, and applications of matrix methods. The proofs in Part I are exclusively done by applying classical analytical methods. Part II is concerned with modern functional analytical methods in summability, and contains the essential functional analytical basis required in later parts of the book, topologization of sequence spaces as K- and KF-spaces, domains of matrix methods as FK-spaces and their topological structure. In this part the proofs are of functional analytical nature only. Part III of the present book deals with topics in summability and topological sequence spaces which require the combination of classical and modern methods. It covers investigations of the constistency of matrix methods and of the bounded domain of matrix methods via Saks space theory, and the presentation of some aspects in topological sequence spaces. Lecturers, graduate students, and researchers working in summability and related topics will find this book a useful introduction and reference work.

This book deals with a class of mathematical problems which involve the minimization of the sum of a volume and a surface energy and have lately been refered to as 'free discontinuity problems'. The aim of this book is twofold: The first three chapters present all the basic prerequisites for the treatment of free discontinuity and other variational problems in a systematic, general, and self-contained way. In the later chapters, the reader is introduced to the theory of free discontinuity problems, to the space of special functions of bounded variation, and is presented with a detailed analysis of the Mumford-Shah image segmentation problem. Existence, regularity and qualitative properties of solutions are explained and a survey is given on the current knowledge of this challenging mathematical problem. Free discontinuity problems reveal a wide range of applications. The theory embodies classical problems, e.g. related to phase transitions, or fracture and plasticity in continuum mechanics, as well as more recent ones like edge detection in image analysis. This book provides the reader with a solid introduction to the field, written by principle contributors to the theory. The first half of the book contains a comprehensive and updated treatment of the theory of Functions of Bounded Variation and of the mathematical prerequisites of that theory, that is Abstract Measure Theory and Geometric Measure Theory.

The last ten years have seen rapid advances in the understanding of differentiable four-manifolds not least of which has been the discovery of new 'exotic' manifolds. These results have had far-reaching consequences in geometry, topology, and mathematical physics and have proved to be a mainspring of current mathematical research. This book provides a lucid and accessible account to the modern study of the geometry of four-manifolds. Consequently, it will form required reading for all those mathematicians and theoretical physicists whose research touches on this topic. Prerequisites are a firm grounding in differential geometry and topology as might be gained from the first year of a graduate course. The authors present both a thorough treatment of the main lines of these developments in four-manifold topology - notably the definition of new invariants of four-manifolds - and also a wide-ranging treatment of relevant topics from geometry and global analysis. All of the main theorems about Yang-Mills instantons on four-manifolds are proved in detail. On the geometric side, the book contains a new proof of the classification of instantons on the four-sphere, together with an extensive discussion of the differential geometry of holomorphic vector bundles. At the end of the book the different strands of the theory are brought together in the proofs of results which settle long-standing problems in four-manifolds topology and which are close to the frontiers of current research.

The geometric approach to quantization was introduced by Kostant and Souriau more than twenty years ago. It has given valuable and lasting insights into the relationship between classical and quantum systems. It continues to be a popular research topic. The ideas have proved useful in pure mathematics, notably in representation theory, as well as in theoretical physics. The most recent applications have been in conformal field theory and in the Jones-Witten theory of knots. The original edition of this book was published in 1980. For this edition it has been completely revised and extensively rewritten. The presentation has been simplified and a large number of examples have been added. The material on field theory has been expanded.

This book is an account of the combinatorics of projective spaces over a finite field, with special emphasis on one and two dimensions. With its successor volumes, Finite projective spaces over three dimensions (1985), which is devoted to three dimensions, and General Galois geometries (1991), on a general dimension, it provides a comprehensive treatise of this area of mathematics. The area is interesting in itself, but is important for its applications to coding theory and statistics, and its use of group theory, algebraic geometry, and number theory. This edition is a complete reworking of the first edition. The chapters bear almost the same titles as the first edition, but every chapter has been changed. The most significant changes are to Chapters 2, 10, 12, 13, which respectively describe generalities, the geometry of arcs in ovals, the geometry of arcs of higher degree, and blocking sets. The book is divided into three parts. The first part comprises two chapters, the first of which is a survey of finite fields; the second outlines the fundamental properties of projective spaces and their automorphisms, as well as properties of algebraic varieties and curves, in particular, that are used in the rest of the book and the accompanying two volumes. Parts II and III are entirely self-contained; all proofs of results are given. The second part comprises Chapters 3 to 5. They cover, in an arbitrary dimension, the properties of subspaces such as their number and characterization, of partitions into both subspaces and subgeometries, and of quadrics and Hermitian varieties, as well as polarities. Part III is a detailed account of the line and the plane. In the plane, fundamental properties are first revisited without much resort to the generalities of Parts I and II. Then, the structure of arcs and their relation to curves is described; this includes arcs both of degree two and higher degrees. There are further chapters on blocking sets and on small planes, which means of orders up to thirteen. A comprehensive bibliography of more than 3000 items is provided. At the end of each chapter is a section, Notes and References, which attributes proofs, includes further comments, and lists every relevant reference from the bibliography.

This is a new and much expanded edition of Professor Macdonald's acclaimed monograph on Symmetric Functions and Hall Polynomials. Almost every chapter has new sections and many new examples have been included throughout. In addition there are two new chapters (6 and 7).Chapter 6 contains an extended account of a family of symmetric functions depending on two parameters. These symmetric functions include as particular cases many of those encountered earlier in the book and they also include, as a limiting case, Jack's symmetric functions depending on a parameter α. Many of the properties of the Schur functions generalize to these two-parameter symmetric functions.Chapter 7 is devoted to the study of the zxonal polynomials, long familiar to staticians. From one point of view, they are a special case of Jack's symmetric functions (the parameter α being equal to 2) but their combinatorial and group-theoretic connections make them worthy of study in their own right.

This successful title is now available in paperback. Wavelet analysis is a growing field of active research, and applications exist in all areas of mathematics, physics, and engineering. This book provides an easy-to-read introduction to the subject, laying the mathematical foundations of the theory and showing the variety of applications by means of examples.

The subject of this book is the theory of special functions, not considered as a list of functions exhibiting a certain range of properties, but based on the unified study of singularities of second-order ordinary differential equations in the complex domain. The number and characteristics of the singularities serve as a basis for classification of each individual special function. Links between linear special functions (as solutions of linear second-order equations), and non-linear special functions (as solutions of Painlevé equations) are presented as a basic and new result. Many applications to different areas of physics are shown and discussed. The book is written from a practical point of view and will address all those scientists whose work involves applications of mathematical methods. Lecturers, graduate students and researchers will find this a valuable text and reference work.

The book starts with a thorough introduction to connections and holonomy groups, and to Riemannian, complex and Kähler geometry. Then the Calabi conjecture is proved and used to deduce the existence of compact manifolds with holonomy SU(m) (Calabi-Yau manifolds) and Sp(m) (hyperkähler manifolds). These are constructed and studied using complex algebraic geometry. The second half of the book is devoted to constructions of compact 7- and 8-manifolds with the exceptional holonomy groups 92 and Spin(7). Many new examples are given, and their Betti numbers calculated. The first known examples of these manifolds were discovered by the author in 1993-5. This is the first book to be written about them, and contains much previously unpublished material which significantly improves the original constructions.

This book describes a completely novel mathematical development which has already influenced probability theory, and has potential for application to engineering and to areas of pure mathematics.Intended for probabilists, mathematicians and engineers with a mathematical background from graduate level onwards, this book develops the evolution of complex non-linear systems subject to rough or rapidly fluctuating stimuli. Attention is focussed on an analysis of the relationship between the stimulus (or control) and the short to medium term evolution of a receiver (the response of the system).A rapidly fluctuation stimuli can be likened to a huge dataset; and a basic question is how best to reduce this dataset so as to capture the critical information and little else. An essential component problem involves identifying the point at which two different stimuli produce essentially the same response from the class of receivers. (When do two stereo sounds sound the same?). This is an essentially non-linear problem that requires novel mathematics.At one level, this book focuses on systems responding to such rough external stimuli, and demonstrates that the natural reduction approximates the stimuli as a sequence of nilpotent elements. The core result of the book is a continuity theorem that proves that the response of the system depends continuously on these nilpotent elements.A key mathematical aspect of the book is the notion of a rough path, based on combining the notion of p-variation of Wiener with the iterated integral expansions of paths introduced by K. T. Chen. The continuity theorem for these rough paths gives a new way to construct solutions to stochastic differential equations, providing a fresh approach to the Itô theory but also allowing new kinds of noisy perturbations (such as Fractional Brownian Motions) that cannot be discussed in the standard Itô approach. It also provides some interesting concrete examples of 'continuous free groups'.

The central concept in this monograph is that of a soluble group - a group which is built up from abelian groups by repeatedly forming group extensions. It covers all the major areas, including finitely generated soluble groups, soluble groups of finite rank, modules over group rings, algorithmic problems, applications of cohomology, and finitely presented groups, whilst remaining fairly strictly within the boundaries of soluble group theory. An up-to-date survey of the area aimed at research students and academic algebraists and group theorists, it is a compendium of information that will be especially useful as a reference work for researchers in the field.

The present book brings into focus the contrast between explicit and implicit algorithmic descriptions of objects. These themes are considered in a variety of settings, sometimes crossing traditional boundaries. Special emphasis is given to moderate complexity - exponential or polynomial - but objects with multi-exponential complexity also fit in. Among the items under consideration are graphs, formal proofs, languages, automata, groups, circuits, some connections with geometry of metric spaces, and complexity classes (P, NP, co-NP).

The present book deals with fractal geometries which have features similar to ones of ordinary Euclidean spaces, while at the same time being quite different from Euclidean spaces in other ways. A basic type of feature being considered is the presence of Sobolev or Poincaré inequalities, concerning the relationship between the average behaviour of a function and the average behaviour of its small-scale oscillations. Remarkable results in the last few years of Bourdon-Pajot and Laakso have shown that there is much more in the way of geometries like this than has been realized. Examples related to nilpotent Lie groups and Carnot metrics were known previously. On the other hand, 'typical' fractals that might be seen in pictures do not have these same kinds of features. 'Some Novel Types of Fractal Geometry' will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in mathematics, working in various aspects of geometry and analysis.

This book is an introduction to surgery theory: the standard classification method for high-dimensional manifolds. It is aimed at graduate students who have already had a basic topology course, and would now like to understand the topology of high-dimensional manifolds. This text contains entry-level accounts of the various prerequisites of both algebra and topology, including basic homotopy and homology, Poincare duality, bundles, cobordism, embeddings, immersions, Whitehead torsion, Poincare complexes, spherical fibrations and quadratic forms and formations. While concentrating on the basic mechanics of surgery, this book includes many worked examples, useful drawings for illustration of the algebra and references for further reading.

This book provides a survey of recent developments in the field of non-linear analysis and the geometry of mappings.Sobolev mappings, quasiconformal mappings, or deformations, between subsets of Euclidean space, or manifolds or more general geometric objects may arise as the solutions to certain optimisation problems in the calculus of variations or in non-linear elasticity, as the solutions to differential equations (particularly in conformal geometry), as local co-ordinates on a manifold or as geometric realisations of abstract isomorphisms between spaces such as those that arise in dynamical systems (for instance in holomorphic dynamics and Kleinian groups). In each case the regularity and geometric properties of these mappings and related non-linear quantities such as Jacobians, tells something about the problems and the spaces under consideration.The applications studied include aspects of harmonic analysis, elliptic PDE theory, differential geometry, the calculus of variations as well as complex dynamics and other areas. Indeed it is the strong interactions between these areas and the geometry of mappings that underscores and motivates the authors' work. Much recent work is included. Even in the classical setting of the Beltrami equation or measurable Riemann mapping theorem, which plays a central role in holomorphic dynamics, Teichmuller theory and low dimensional topology and geometry, the authors present precise results in the degenerate elliptic setting. The governing equations of non-linear elasticity and quasiconformal geometry are studied intensively in the degenerate elliptic setting, and there are suggestions for potential applications for researchers in other areas.

Written by a leading scholar in mathematics, this monograph discusses the Radon transform, a field that has wide ranging applications to X-ray technology, partial differential equations, nuclear magnetic resonance scanning, and tomography. In this book, Ehrenpreis focuses on recent research and highlights the strong relationship between high-level pure mathematics and applications of the Radon transform to areas such as medical imaging.The first part of the book discusses parametric and nonparametric Radon transforms, Harmonic Functions and Radon transform on Algebraic Varieties, nonlinear Radon and Fourier transforms, Radon transform on groups, and Radon transform as the interrelation of geometry and analysis. The later parts discuss the extension of solutions of differential equations, Periods of Eisenstein and Poincaré, and some problems of integral geometry arising in tomography. Examples and proofs are provided throughout the book to aid the reader's understanding.This is the latest title in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs, which includes texts and monographs covering many topics of current research interest in pure and applied mathematics. Other titles include: Carbone and Semmes: A graphic apology for symmetry and implicitness; Higson and Roe: Analytic K-Homology; Iwaniec and Martin: Geometric Function Theory and Nonlinear Analysis; Lyons and Qian: System Control and Rough Paths. Also new in paperback Johnson and Lapidus: The Feynman Integral and Feynman's Operational Calculus; Donaldson and Kronheimer: The geometry of four-manifolds.

In the last 20 years, the study of operator algebras has developed from a branch of functional analysis to a central field of mathematics with applications and connections with different areas in both pure mathematics (foliations, index theory, K-theory, cyclic homology, affine Kac--Moody algebras, quantum groups, low dimensional topology) and mathematical physics (integrable theories, statistical mechanics, conformal field theories and the string theories of elementary particles). The theory of operator algebras was initiated by von Neumann and Murray as a tool for studying group representations and as a framework for quantum mechanics, and has since kept in touch with its roots in physics as a framework for quantum statistical mechanics and the formalism of algebraic quantum field theory. However, in 1981, the study of operator algebras took a new turn with the introduction by Vaughan Jones of subfactor theory and remarkable connections were found with knot theory, 3-manifolds, quantum groups and integrable systems in statistical mechanics and conformal field theory. The purpose of this book, one of the first in the area, is to look at these combinatorial-algebraic developments from the perspective of operator algebras; to bring the reader to the frontline of research with the minimum of prerequisites from classical theory.

Analytic K-homology draws together ideas from algebraic topology, functional analysis and geometry. It is a tool - a means of conveying information among these three subjects - and it has been used with specacular success to discover remarkable theorems across a wide span of mathematics. The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the essential ideas of analytic K-homology and develop some of its applications. It includes a detailed introduction to the necessary functional analysis, followed by an exploration of the connections between K-homology and operator theory, coarse geometry, index theory, and assembly maps, including a detailed treatment of the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem. Beginning with the rudiments of C* - algebra theory, the book will lead the reader to some central notions of contemporary research in geometric functional analysis. Much of the material included here has never previously appeared in book form.

Black Holes are regions of space-time where the gravitational field is so strong that not even light can escape. There has been much written on black holes, however in most cases they are treated as isolated objects. The author has found a number of cases in which the interaction of a black hole with another strong-field system (such as the background universe or another black hole) could be treated analytically. This includes using the powerful method of matched asymptotic expansions. In this book the author considers these wider ranging problems and examples for the first time. This book will be widely read by all those working in gravitation, and PhD students in mathematical physics.

Research mathematicians in algebraic topology will be interested in this new attempt to classify homotopy types of simply connected CW-complexes. This book provides a modern treatment of a long established set of questions in algebraic topology. The author is a leading figure in this important research area.

The asymptotic analysis of boundary value problems in parameter-dependent domains is a rapidly developing field of research in the theory of partial differential equations, with important applications in electrostatics, elasticity, hydrodynamics and fracture mechanics. Building on the work of Ciarlet and Destuynder, this book provides a systematic coverage of these methods in multi-structures, i.e. domains which are dependent on a small parameter e in such a way that the limit region consists of subsets of different space dimensions. An undergraduate knowledge of partial differential equations and functional analysis is assumed.

The aim of this book is to make accessible to mathematicians, physicists and other scientists interested in qunatum theory, the beautiful but mathematically difficult subjects of the Feynman integral and Feynman's operational calculus. Some advantages of the approaches to the Feynman integral which are treated in detail in this book are the following: the existence of the Feynman integral is established for very general potentials in all four cases; under more restrictive but still broad conditions, three of these Feynman integrals agree with one another and with the unitary group from the usual approach to quantum dynamics; these same three Feynman integrals possess pleasant stability properties. Much of the material covered here was previously available only in the research literature, and the book also contains some new results. The background material in mathematics and physics that motivates the study of the Feynman integral and Feynman's operational calculus is discussed, and detailed proofs are provided for the central results.

Threading Homology through Algebra takes homological themes (Koszul complexes and their variations, resolutions in general) and shows how these affect the perception of certain problems in selected parts of algebra, as well as their success in solving a number of them. The text deals with regular local rings, depth-sensitive complexes, finite free resolutions, letter-place algebra, Schur and Weyl modules, Weyl-Schur complexes and determinantal ideals. Aimed at graduates and academics in mathematics, the book provides an overview of the developments that have taken place in these areas as well as an insight into some of the open problems which exist.

For graduate students and researchers, this self contained text provides a carefully structured, coherent, and comprehensive treatment of the mathematical modelling in electromagnetism of continuous media. The authors provide a systematic review of known subjects along with many original results.Part I reviews basic notions and approaches in electromagnetism (Maxwell's equations, Green's functions, harmonic fields, dispersive effects) and emphasizes the physical motivation for the modelling of non-conventional materials. The frequency-dependent properties (such as conductivity, polarizability, and magnetizability), which enter wave diffraction and dispersion, are shown, and these lead to a discussion of models of materials with fading memory in the time domain. Part II develops the thermodynamics of electromagnetic and thermoelectromagnetic materials with memory and provides a systematic account of thermodynamic restrictions. Existence, uniqueness and stability problems are investigated. Also, variational formulations and wave propagation solution are established.Part III is devoted to more involved models which are motivated by the interest in materials and structures with non-conventional properties. The mathematical modelling deals with non-linearity, non-locality and hysteresis. In non-linear materials attention is focussed on the generation of harmonics and in discontinuity waves. Non-locality is examined in a general way and hence is applied to superconductivity. Hysteresis is developed for magnetism. A review of known schemes is given along with new results about the modelling of hysteresis loops. The wide application of technologies in new mechanical, electronic and biomedical systems calls for materials and structures with non-conventional properties (e.g materials with 'memory'). Of equal importance is the understanding of the physical behaviour of these materials and consequently developing mathematical modelling techniques for prediction.Includes appendices that include some properties of Bessel functions, Fourier transforms and Sobolev spaces, compact operators and eigenfunctions, differential operators in curvilinear coordinates, and finite formulation of electromagnetism.

This text illustrates how different methods of finite group theory including representation theory, cohomology theory, combinatorial group theory and local analysis are combined to construct one of the last of the sporadic finite simple groups - the fourth Janko group J_4.Aimed at graduates and researchers in group theory, geometry and algebra, Ivanov's approach is based on analysis of group amalgams and the geometry of the complexes of these amalgams with emphasis on the underlying theory.An indispensible resource, this book will be a unique and essential reference for researchers in the area.The author is a leading researcher in the field.