This book publishes papers originally presented at a conference on the Mathematical Aspects of Orbifold String Theory, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It contains a great deal of information not fully covered in the published literature and showcases the current state of the art in orbital string theory. The subject of orbifolds has a long prehistory, going back to the work of Thurston and Haefliger, with roots in the theory of manifolds, group actions, and foliations. The recent explosion of activity on the topic has been powered by applications of orbifolds to moduli problems and quantum field theory. The present volume presents an interdisciplinary look at orbifold problems. Topics such as stacks, vertex operator algebras, branes, groupoids, K-theory and quantum cohomology are discussed. The book reflects the thinking of distinguished investigators working in the areas of mathematical physics, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, symplectic geometry and representation theory. By presenting the work of a broad range of mathematicians and physicists who use and study orbifolds, it familiarizes readers with the various points of view and types of results the researchers bring to the subject.

Vertex operator algebras are a class of algebras underlying a number of recent constructions, results, and themes in mathematics. These algebras can be understood as ''string-theoretic analogues'' of Lie algebras and of commutative associative algebras. They play fundamental roles in some of the most active research areas in mathematics and physics. Much recent progress in both physics and mathematics has benefited from cross-pollination between the physical and mathematical points of view. This book presents the proceedings from the workshop, ''Vertex Operator Algebras in Mathematics and Physics'', held at The Fields Institute. It consists of papers based on many of the talks given at the conference by leading experts in the algebraic, geometric, and physical aspects of vertex operator algebra theory. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in the major themes and important developments on the frontier of research in vertex operator algebra theory and its applications in mathematics and physics.

This volume is a collection of articles on orbifolds, algebraic curves with higher spin structures, and related invariants of Gromov-Witten type. Orbifold Gromov-Witten theory generalizes quantum cohomology for orbifolds, whereas spin cohomological field theory is based on the moduli spaces of higher spin curves and is related by Witten's conjecture to the Gelfand-Dickey integrable hierarchies. A common feature of these two very different looking theories is the central role played by orbicurves in both of them. Insights in one theory can often yield insights into the other. This book brings together for the first time papers related to both sides of this interaction. The articles in the collection cover diverse topics, such as geometry and topology of orbifolds, cohomological field theories, orbifold Gromov-Witten theory, $G$-Frobenius algebra and singularities, Frobenius manifolds and Givental's quantization formalism, moduli of higher spin curves and spin cohomological field theory.

This volume is a collection of articles by speakers at the Poisson 2006 conference. The program for Poisson 2006 was an overlap of topics that included deformation quantization, generalized complex structures, differentiable stacks, normal forms, and group-valued moment maps and reduction.

Quantum cohomology, the theory of Frobenius manifolds and the relations to integrable systems are flourishing areas since the early 90's. An activity was organized at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, with the purpose of bringing together the main experts in these areas. This volume originates from this activity and presents the state of the art in the subject.

The beauty and the mystery surrounding the interplay between mathematics and physics is captured by E. Wigner's famous expression, ``The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics''. We don't know why, but physical laws are described by mathematics, and good mathematics sooner or later finds applications in physics, often in a surprising way. In this sense, mathematical physics is a very old subject-as Egyptian, Phoenician, or Greek history tells us. But mathematical physics is a very modern subject, as any working mathematician or physicist can witness. It is a challenging discipline that has to provide results of interest for both mathematics and physics. Ideas and motivations from both these sciences give it a vitality and freshness that is difficult to find anywhere else. One of the big physical revolutions in the twentieth century, quantum physics, opened a new magnificent era for this interplay. With the appearance of noncommutative analysis, the role of classical calculus has been taken by commutation relations, a subject still growing in an astonishing way. A good example where mathematical physics showed its power, beauty, and interdisciplinary character is the Doplicher-Haag-Roberts analysis of superselection sectors in the late 1960s. Not only did this theory explain the origin of statistics and classify it, but year after year, new connections have merged, for example with Tomita-Takesaki modular theory, Jones theory of subfactors, and Doplicher-Roberts abstract duality for compact groups. This volume contains the proceedings of the conference, ``Mathematical Physics in Mathematics and Physics'', dedicated to Sergio Doplicher and John E. Roberts held in Siena, Italy. The articles offer current research in various fields of mathematical physics, primarily concerning quantum aspects of operator algebras.

This volume contains seven chapters based on lectures given by invited speakers at two May 2010 workshops held at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 2016 AMS von Neumann Symposium on Topological Recursion and its Influence in Analysis, Geometry, and Topology, which was held from July 4–8, 2016, at the Hilton Charlotte University Place, Charlotte, North Carolina. The papers contained in the volume present a snapshot of rapid and rich developments in the emerging research field known as topological recursion. It has its origin around 2004 in random matrix theory and also in Mirzakhani's work on the volume of moduli spaces of hyperbolic surfaces. Topological recursion has played a fundamental role in connecting seemingly unrelated areas of mathematics such as matrix models, enumeration of Hurwitz numbers and Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants, Gromov-Witten invariants, the A-polynomials and colored polynomial invariants of knots, WKB analysis, and quantization of Hitchin moduli spaces. In addition to establishing these topics, the volume includes survey papers on the most recent key accomplishments: discovery of the unexpected relation to semi-simple cohomological field theories and a solution to the remodeling conjecture. It also provides a glimpse into the future research direction; for example, connections with the Airy structures, modular functors, Hurwitz-Frobenius manifolds, and ELSV-type formulas.

The conference String-Math 2014 was held from June 9–13, 2014, at the University of Alberta. This edition of String-Math is the first to include satellite workshops: “String-Math Summer School” (held from June 2–6, 2014, at the University of British Columbia), “Calabi-Yau Manifolds and their Moduli” (held from June 14–18, 2014, at the University of Alberta), and “Quantum Curves and Quantum Knot Invariants” (held from June 16–20, 2014, at the Banff International Research Station). This volume presents the proceedings of the conference and satellite workshops. For mathematics, string theory has been a source of many significant inspirations, ranging from Seiberg-Witten theory in four-manifolds, to enumerative geometry and Gromov-Witten theory in algebraic geometry, to work on the Jones polynomial in knot theory, to recent progress in the geometric Langlands program and the development of derived algebraic geometry and n-category theory. In the other direction, mathematics has provided physicists with powerful tools, ranging from powerful differential geometric techniques for solving or analyzing key partial differential equations, to toric geometry, to K-theory and derived categories in D-branes, to the analysis of Calabi-Yau manifolds and string compactifications, to modular forms and other arithmetic techniques. Articles in this book address many of these topics.

This volume contains research and expository papers by some of the speakers at the 2005 AMS Summer Institute on Algebraic Geometry. Numerous papers delve into the geometry of various moduli spaces, including those of stable curves, stable maps, coherent sheaves, and abelian varieties.