Tata Lectures on Theta I

ISBN-13: 9780817645724 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 256 str.

David Mumford; C. Musili; M. Nori

Opis

This volume contains the first two out of four chapters which are intended to survey a large part of the theory of theta functions. These notes grew out of a series of lectures given at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the period October, 1978, to March, 1979, on which notes were taken and excellently written up by C. Musili and M. Nori. I subsequently lectured at greater length on the contents of Chapter III at Harvard in the fall of 1979 and at a Summer School in Montreal in August, 1980, and again notes were very capably put together by E. Previato and M. Stillman, respectively. Both the Tata Institute and the University of Montreal publish lecture note series in which I had promised to place write-ups of my lectures there. However, as the project grew, it became clear that it was better to tie all these results together, rearranging and consolidating the material, and to make them available from one place. I am very grateful to the Tata Institute and the University of Montreal for permission to do this, and to Birkhauser-Boston for publishing the final result. The first 2 chapters study theta functions strictly from the viewpoint of classical analysis. In particular, in Chapter I, my goal was to explain in the simplest cases why the theta functions attracted attention.

Spis treści

and motivation: theta functions in one variable.- Basic results on theta functions in several variables.

O autorze

David Mumford was born on June 11, 1937 in England and has been associated with Harvard University continuously from entering as freshman to his present position of Higgins Professor of Mathematics.
Mumford worked in the fields of Algebraic Gemetry in the 60's and 70's, concentrating especially on the theory of moduli spaces: spaces which classify all objects of some type, such as all curves of a given genus or all vector bundles on a fixed curve of given rank and degree. Mumford was awarded the Fields Medal in 1974 for his work on moduli spaces and algebraic surfaces. He is presently working on the mathematics of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence.

Blurb

The first of a series of three volumes surveying the theory of theta functions and its significance in the fields of representation theory and algebraic geometry, this volume deals with the basic theory of theta functions in one and several variables, and some of its number theoretic applications.

Requiring no background in advanced algebraic geometry, the text serves as a modern introduction to the subject.