This book examines the differential geometry of manifolds, loop spaces, line bundles and groupoids, and the relations of this geometry to mathematical physics. Applications presented in the book involve anomaly line bundles on loop spaces and anomaly functionals, central extensions of loop groups, Kähler geometry of the space of knots, and Cheeger--Chern--Simons secondary characteristics classes. It also covers the Dirac monopole and Dirac’s quantization of the electrical charge.

This book constitutes a review volume on the relatively new subject of Quantum Topology. Quantum Topology has its inception in the 1984/1985 discoveries of new invariants of knots and links (Jones, Homfly and Kauffman polynomials). These invariants were rapidly connected with quantum groups and methods in statistical mechanics. This was followed by Edward Witten's introduction of methods of quantum field theory into the subject and the formulation by Witten and Michael Atiyah of the concept of topological quantum field theories.This book is a review volume of on-going research activity. The papers derive from talks given at the Special Session on Knot and Topological Quantum Field Theory of the American Mathematical Society held at Dayton, Ohio in the fall of 1992. The book consists of a self-contained article by Kauffman, entitled Introduction to Quantum Topology and eighteen research articles by participants in the special session.This book should provide a useful source of ideas and results for anyone interested in the interface between topology and quantum field theory.

Ideas and techniques from the theory of integrable systems are playing an increasingly important role in geometry. Thanks to the development of tools from Lie theory, algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry, and topology, classical problems are investigated more systematically. New problems are also arising in mathematical physics. A major international conference was held at the University of Tokyo in July 2000. It brought together scientists in all of the areas influenced by integrable systems. This book is the second of three collections of expository and research articles. This volume focuses on topology and physics. The role of zero curvature equations outside of the traditional context of differential geometry has been recognized relatively recently, but it has been an extraordinarily productive one, and most of the articles in this volume make some reference to it. Symplectic geometry, Floer homology, twistor theory, quantum cohomology, and the structure of special equations of mathematical physics, such as the Toda field equations--all of these areas have gained from the integrable systems point of view and contributed to it. Many of the articles in this volume are written by prominent researchers and will serve as introductions to the topics. It is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in integrable systems and their relations to differential geometry, topology, algebraic geometry, and physics. The first volume from this conference also available from the AMS is Differential Geometry and Integrable Systems, Volume 308 CONM/308 in the Contemporary Mathematics series. The forthcoming third volume will be published by the Mathematical Society of Japan and will be available outside of Japan from the AMS in the Advanced Studies in Pure Mathematics series.

This volume contains a state-of-the-art discussion of recent progress in a range of related topics in symplectic geometry and mathematical physics, including symplectic groupoids, geometric quantization, noncommutative differential geometry, equivariant cohomology, deformation quantization, topological quantum field theory, and knot invariants.

This volume, dedicated to Bertram Kostant on the occasion of his 65th birthday, is a collection of 22 invited papers by leading mathematicians working in Lie theory, geometry, algebra, and mathematical physics. Kostant’s fundamental work in all these areas has provided deep new insights and connections, and has created new fields of research. The papers gathered here present original research articles as well as expository papers, broadly reflecting the range of Kostant’s work.

The subject of algebraic cycles has thrived through its interaction with algebraic K-theory, Hodge theory, arithmetic algebraic geometry, number theory, and topology. These interactions have led to such developments as a description of Chow groups in terms of algebraic K-theory, the arithmetic Abel-Jacobi mapping, progress on the celebrated conjectures of Hodge and Tate, and the conjectures of Bloch and Beilinson. The immense recent progress in algebraic cycles, based on so many interactions with so many other areas of mathematics, has contributed to a considerable degree of inaccessibility, especially for graduate students. Even specialists in one approach to algebraic cycles may not understand other approaches well. This book offers students and specialists alike a broad perspective of algebraic cycles, presented from several viewpoints, including arithmetic, transcendental, topological, motives and K-theory methods. Topics include a discussion of the arithmetic Abel-Jacobi mapping, higher Abel-Jacobi regulator maps, polylogarithms and L-series, candidate Bloch-Beilinson filtrations, applications of Chern-Simons invariants to algebraic cycles via the study of algebraic vector bundles with algebraic connection, motivic cohomology, Chow groups of singular varieties, and recent progress on the Hodge and Tate conjectures for Abelian varieties.

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference ``Analysis, Geometry and Quantum Field Theory'' held at Potsdam University in September 2011, which honored Steve Rosenberg's 60th birthday. The papers in this volume cover a wide range of areas, including Quantum Field Theory, Deformation Quantization, Gerbes, Loop Spaces, Index Theory, Determinants of Elliptic Operators, K-theory, Infinite Rank Bundles and Mathematical Biology.

In this graduate-level book, leading researchers explore various new notions of 'space' in mathematical physics.

Few people have proved more influential in the field of differential and algebraic geometry, and in showing how this links with mathematical physics, than Nigel Hitchin. Oxford University's Savilian Professor of Geometry has made fundamental contributions in areas as diverse as: spin geometry, instanton and monopole equations, twistor theory, symplectic geometry of moduli spaces, integrables systems, Higgs bundles, Einstein metrics, hyperkähler geometry, Frobenius manifolds, Painlevé equations, special Lagrangian geometry and mirror symmetry, theory of grebes, and many more. He was previously Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, as well as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and has been the President of the London Mathematical Society. The chapters in this fascinating volume, written by some of the greats in their fields (including four Fields Medalists), show how Hitchin's ideas have impacted on a wide variety of subjects. The book grew out of the Geometry Conference in Honour of Nigel Hitchin, held in Madrid, with some additional contributions, and should be required reading for anyone seeking insights into the overlap between geometry and physics.

Providing a systematic introduction to differential characters as introduced by Cheeger and Simons, this text describes important concepts such as fiber integration, higher dimensional holonomy, transgression, and the product structure in a geometric manner. Differential characters form a model of what is nowadays called differential cohomology, which is the mathematical structure behind the higher gauge theories in physics.