Geometric measure theory has roots going back to ancient Greek mathematics, for considerations of the isoperimetric problem (to ?nd the planar domain of given perimeter having greatest area) led naturally to questions about spatial regions and boundaries. In more modern times, the Plateau problem is considered to be the wellspring of questions in geometric measure theory. Named in honor of the nineteenth century Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, who studied surface tension phenomena in general, andsoap?lmsandsoapbubblesinparticular, thequestion(initsoriginalformulation) was to show that a...

Markov processes are among the most important stochastic processes for both theory and applications. This book develops the general theory of these processes and applies this theory to various special examples. The initial chapter is devoted to the most important classical example-one-dimensional Brownian motion. This, together with a chapter on continuous time Markov chains, provides the motivation for the general setup based on semigroups and generators. Chapters on stochastic calculus and probabilistic potential theory give an introduction to some of the key areas of application of...