In the fall of 1992 I was invited by Professor Changho Keem to visit Seoul National University and give a series of talks. I was asked to write a monograph based on my talks, and the result was published by the Global Analysis Research Center of that University in 1994. The monograph treated deficiency modules and liaison theory for complete intersections. Over the next several years I continually thought of improvements and additions that I would like to make to the manuscript, and at the same time my research led me in directions that gave me a fresh perspective on much of the material, especially in the direction of liaison theory. This re sulted in a dramatic change in the focus of this manuscript, from complete intersections to Gorenstein ideals, and a substantial amount of additions and revisions. It is my hope that this book now serves not only as an introduction to a beautiful subject, but also gives the reader a glimpse at very recent developments and an idea of the direction in which liaison theory is going, at least from my perspective. One theme which I have tried to stress is the tremendous amount of geometry which lies at the heart of the subject, and the beautiful interplay between algebra and geometry. Whenever possible I have given remarks and examples to illustrate this interplay, and I have tried to phrase the results in as geometric a way as possible.

Federico Gaeta (1923–2007) was a Spanish algebraic geometer who was a student of Severi. He is considered to be one of the founders of linkage theory, on which he published several key papers. After many years abroad he came back to Spain in the 1980s. He spent his last period as a professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In gratitude to him, some of his personal and mathematically close persons during this last station, all of whom bene?ted in one way or another by his ins- ration, have joined to edit this volume to keep his memory alive. We o?er in it surveys and original articles on the three main subjects of Gaeta’s interest through his mathematical life. The volume opens with a personal semblance by Ignacio Sols and a historical presentation by Ciro Ciliberto of Gaeta’s Italian period. Then it is divided into three parts, each of them devoted to a speci?c subject studied by Gaeta and coordinated by one of the editors. For each part, we had the advice of another colleague of Federico linked to that particular subject, who also contributed with a short survey. The ?rst part, coordinated by E. Arrondo with the advice of R.M.

D-modules continues to be an active area of stimulating research in such mathematical areas as algebraic, analysis, differential equations, and representation theory. Key to D-modules, Perverse Sheaves, and Representation Theory is the authors' essential algebraic-analytic approach to the theory, which connects D-modules to representation theory and other areas of mathematics. To further aid the reader, and to make the work as self-contained as possible, appendices are provided as background for the theory of derived categories and algebraic varieties. The book is intended to serve graduate students in a classroom setting and as self-study for researchers in algebraic geometry, representation theory.

This book is an outgrowth of the Workshop on "Regulators in Analysis, Geom etry and Number Theory" held at the Edmund Landau Center for Research in Mathematical Analysis of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996. During the preparation and the holding of the workshop we were greatly helped by the director of the Landau Center: Lior Tsafriri during the time of the planning of the conference, and Hershel Farkas during the meeting itself. Organizing and running this workshop was a true pleasure, thanks to the expert technical help provided by the Landau Center in general, and by its secretary Simcha Kojman in particular. We would like to express our hearty thanks to all of them. However, the articles assembled in the present volume do not represent the proceedings of this workshop; neither could all contributors to the book make it to the meeting, nor do the contributions herein necessarily reflect talks given in Jerusalem. In the introduction, we outline our view of the theory to which this volume intends to contribute. The crucial objective of the present volume is to bring together concepts, methods, and results from analysis, differential as well as algebraic geometry, and number theory in order to work towards a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of regulators and secondary invariants. Our thanks go to all the participants of the workshop and authors of this volume. May the readers of this book enjoy and profit from the combination of mathematical ideas here documented.

In the last decade there has been an extraordinary confluence of ideas in mathematics and theoretical physics brought about by pioneering discoveries in geometry and analysis. The various chapters in this volume, treating the interface of geometric analysis and mathematical physics, represent current research interests. No suitable succinct account of the material is available elsewhere. Key topics include: * A self-contained derivation of the partition function of Chern- Simons gauge theory in the semiclassical approximation (D.H. Adams) * Algebraic and geometric aspects of the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations in conformal field theory (P. Bouwknegt) * Application of the representation theory of loop groups to simple models in quantum field theory and to certain integrable systems (A.L. Carey and E. Langmann) * A study of variational methods in Hermitian geometry from the viewpoint of the critical points of action functionals together with physical backgrounds (A. Harris) * A review of monopoles in nonabelian gauge theories (M.K. Murray) * Exciting developments in quantum cohomology (Y. Ruan) * The physics origin of Seiberg-Witten equations in 4-manifold theory (S. Wu) Graduate students, mathematicians and mathematical physicists in the above-mentioned areas will benefit from the user-friendly introductory style of each chapter as well as the comprehensive bibliographies provided for each topic. Prerequisite knowledge is minimal since sufficient background material motivates each chapter.

Kac-Moody Lie algebras 9 were introduced in the mid-1960s independently by V. Kac and R. Moody, generalizing the finite-dimensional semisimple Lie alge bras which we refer to as the finite case. The theory has undergone tremendous developments in various directions and connections with diverse areas abound, including mathematical physics, so much so that this theory has become a stan dard tool in mathematics. A detailed treatment of the Lie algebra aspect of the theory can be found in V. Kac's book [Kac-90l This self-contained work treats the algebro-geometric and the topological aspects of Kac-Moody theory from scratch. The emphasis is on the study of the Kac-Moody groups 9 and their flag varieties XY, including their detailed construction, and their applications to the representation theory of g. In the finite case, 9 is nothing but a semisimple Y simply-connected algebraic group and X is the flag variety 9 /Py for a parabolic subgroup p y C g.

This expository monograph was written for three reasons. Firstly, we wanted to present the solution to a problem posed by Wolfgang Krull in 1932 [Krull 32]. He asked whether what we now call the "Krull-Schmidt Theorem" holds for ar tinian modules. The problem remained open for 63 years: its solution, a negative answer to Krull's question, was published only in 1995 (see [Facchini, Herbera, Levy and Vamos]). Secondly, we wanted to present the answer to a question posed by Warfield in 1975 [Warfield 75]. He proved that every finitely pre sented module over a serial ring is a direct sum of uniserial modules, and asked if such a decomposition was unique. In other words, Warfield asked whether the "Krull-Schmidt Theorem" holds for serial modules. The solution to this problem, a negative answer again, appeared in [Facchini 96]. Thirdly, the so lution to Warfield's problem shows interesting behavior, a rare phenomenon in the history of Krull-Schmidt type theorems. Essentially, the Krull-Schmidt Theorem holds for some classes of modules and not for others. When it does hold, any two indecomposable decompositions are uniquely determined up to a permutation, and when it does not hold for a class of modules, this is proved via an example. For serial modules the Krull-Schmidt Theorem does not hold, but any two indecomposable decompositions are uniquely determined up to two permutations. We wanted to present such a phenomenon to a wider math ematical audience.

* First of three independent, self-contained volumes under the general title, "Lie Theory," featuring original results and survey work from renowned mathematicians. * Contains J. C. Jantzen's "Nilpotent Orbits in Representation Theory," and K.-H. Neeb's "Infinite Dimensional Groups and their Representations." * Comprehensive treatments of the relevant geometry of orbits in Lie algebras, or their duals, and the correspondence to representations. * Should benefit graduate students and researchers in mathematics and mathematical physics.

This volume uses a unified approach to representation theory and automorphic forms. It collects papers, written by leading mathematicians, that track recent progress in the expanding fields of representation theory and automorphic forms and their association with number theory and differential geometry. Topics include: Automorphic forms and distributions, modular forms, visible-actions, Dirac cohomology, holomorphic forms, harmonic analysis, self-dual representations, and Langlands Functoriality Conjecture, Both graduate students and researchers will find inspiration in this volume.