Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop and the 16th International Conference, Como, Italy, August 24-29, 1987

After several decades of reduced contact, the interaction between physicists and mathematicians in the front-line research of both fields recently became deep and fruit ful again. Many of the leading specialists of both fields became involved in this devel opment. This process even led to the discovery of previously unsuspected connections between various subfields of physics and mathematics. In mathematics this concerns in particular knots von Neumann algebras, Kac-Moody algebras, integrable non-linear partial differential equations, and differential geometry in low dimensions, most im portantly in three and four dimensional spaces. In physics it concerns gravity, string theory, integrable classical and quantum field theories, solitons and the statistical me chanics of surfaces. New discoveries in these fields are made at a rapid pace. This conference brought together active researchers in these areas, reporting their results and discussing with other participants to further develop thoughts in future new directions. The conference was attended by SO participants from 15 nations. These proceedings document the program and the talks at the conference. This conference was preceded by a two-week summer school. Ten lecturers gave extended lectures on related topics. The proceedings of the school will also be published in the NATO-AS[ volume by Plenum. The Editors vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the many people who have made the conference a success. Furthermore, ·we appreciate the excellent talks. The active participation of everyone present made the conference lively and stimulating. All of this made our efforts worth while.

This proceedings reports on some of the most recent advances on the interaction between Differential Geometry and Theoretical Physics, a very active and exciting area of contemporary research.The papers are grouped into the following four broad categories: Geometric Methods, Noncommutative Geometry, Quantum Gravity and Topological Quantum Field Theory. A few of the topics covered are Chern-Simons Theory and Generalizations, Knot Invariants, Models of 2D Gravity, Quantum Groups and Strings on Black Holes.

This volume contains intense studies on Quantum Groups, Knot Theory, Statistical Mechanics, Conformal Field Theory, Differential Geometry and Differential Equation Methods and so on. It has contributions by renowned experts and covers most of the recent developments in these fields.

The following pages represent the Proceedings of the XI Annual Conference on Differential Geometric Methods in Mathematical Physics which was held in Jerusalem from August 5 through 11, 1982 under the auspices of the Tel Aviv University and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In addition to the above mentioned institutions, partial financial support was received form the Bank Leumi Lelsrael Fund for International Conferences, the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Mathematics and Physics Branch of the United States Army Research, Development and Standardization Group (UK). We are grateful to all of these organizations for their financial support. GAUGE THEORY AND NUCLEAR STRUCTURE K. Bleuler Institut fur Theoretische Kernphysik der Universitat Bonn NuBallee 14-16, D-5300 Bonn, West-Germany I. INTRODUCTION The recent, most impressive verification of the Salam­ -Weinberg theory of electro-weak interactions through the experimental discovery of the so-called inter­ mediate bosons represents, at the same time, a success of the general gauge theoretical viewpoints in modern particle physics (quantum chromodynamics, 0CD). This theory leads to a deeper and by far more natural inter­ pretation of particle interaction and induces, as we shall see, also a profound change in our understanding of nuclear structure.