This textbook for graduate students introduces integrable systems through the study of Riemann surfaces, loop groups, and twistors. The introduction by Nigel Hitchin addresses the meaning of integrability, discussing in particular how to recognize an integrable system. He then develops connections between integrable systems and algebraic geometry and introduces Riemann surfaces, sheaves, and line bundles. In the next part, Graeme Segal takes the Korteweg-de Vries and nonlinear Schrodinger equations as central examples and discusses the mathematical structures underlying the inverse scattering...

This second edition of a popular and unique introduction to Clifford algebras and spinors has three new chapters. The beginning chapters cover the basics: vectors, complex numbers and quaternions are introduced with an eye on Clifford algebras. The next chapters, which will also interest physicists, include treatments of the quantum mechanics of the electron, electromagnetism and special relativity. A new classification of spinors is introduced, based on bilinear covariants of physical observables. This reveals a new class of spinors, residing among the Weyl, Majorana and Dirac spinors....

Here is a self-contained introduction to quantum groups as algebraic objects. Based on the author's lecture notes for the Part III pure mathematics course at Cambridge University, the book is suitable as a primary text for graduate courses in quantum groups or supplementary reading for modern courses in advanced algebra. The material assumes knowledge of basic and linear algebra. Some familiarity with semisimple Lie algebras would also be helpful. The volume is a primer for mathematicians but it will also be useful for mathematical physicists.

This volume contains selected papers from the international conference Tits Buildings and the Model Theory of Groups, held in WUrzburg in 2000. The first part provides a general introduction to many aspects of buildings and their geometries, based on short lecture courses given at the conference. The rest of the book comprises survey and research articles on model theoretic results and techniques. Amalgamation constructions a la Hrushovski are explained and classified, as they are important techniques both in model theory and geometry. The articles demonstrate the close connection between...

Professor Peter Hilton is one of the best known mathematicians of his generation. He has published almost 300 books and papers on various aspects of topology and algebra. The present volume is to celebrate the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It begins with a bibliography of his work, followed by reviews of his contributions to topology and algebra. These are followed by eleven research papers concerned with various topics of current interest in algebra and topology. The articles are contributed by some of the many mathematicians with whom he has worked at one time or another. This book...

Convex polytopes are the analogues in space of any dimension of convex plane polygons and of convex polyhedra in ordinary space. This book describes a fresh approach to the classification of these objects according to their symmetry properties, based on ideas of topology and transformation group theory. Although there is considerable agreement with traditional treatments, a number of new concepts emerge that present classical ideas in a quite new way. For example, the family of regular convex polytopes is extended to the family of 'perfect polytopes'. Thus the familiar set of five Platonic...

This introduction to recent work in p-adic analysis and number theory will make accessible to a relatively general audience the efforts of a number of mathematicians over the last five years. After reviewing the basics (the construction of p-adic numbers and the p-adic analog of the complex number field, power series and Newton polygons), the author develops the properties of p-adic Dirichlet L-series using p-adic measures and integration. p-adic gamma functions are introduced, and their relationship to L-series is explored. Analogies with the corresponding complex analytic case are stressed....

This book contains selected papers from the international conference 'Groups - St Andrews 1981', which was held at the University of St Andrews in July/August 1981. Its contents reflect the main topics of the conference: combinatorial group theory; infinite groups; general groups, finite or infinite; computational group theory. Four courses, each providing a five-lecture survey, given by J. Neubuser (Aachen), D. J. S. Robinson (Illinois), S. J. Tobin (Galway) and J. Wiengold (Cardiff), have been expanded into articles, forming the first part of the book. The second part consists of surveys...

In this book Professor Rees introduces and proves some of the main results of the asymptotic theory of ideals. The author's aim is to prove his Valuation Theorem, Strong Valuation Theorem, and Degree Formula, and to develop their consequences. The last part of the book is devoted to mixed multiplicities. Here the author develops his theory of general elements of ideals and gives a proof of a generalised degree formula. The reader is assumed to be familiar with basic commutative algebra, as covered in the standard texts, but the presentation is suitable for advanced graduate students. The work...

This book considers convergence of adapted sequences of real and Banach space-valued integrable functions.