This book presents global actions of arbitrary Lie groups on large classes of generalised functions by using a novel parametric approach. This new method extends and completes earlier results of the author and collaborators, in which global Lie group actions on generalised functions were only defined in the case of projectable or fibre-preserving Lie group actions. The parametric method opens the possibility of dealing with vastly larger classes of Lie semigroup actions which still transform solutions into solutions. These Lie semigroups can contain arbitrary noninvertible smooth mappings. Thus, they cannot be subsemigroups of Lie groups. Audience: This volume is addressed to graduate students and researchers involved in solving linear and nonlinear partial differential equations, and in particular, in dealing with the Lie group symmetries of their classical or generalised solutions.

Questions regarding the interplay of nonlinearity and the creation and propagation of singularities arise in a variety of fields-including nonlinear partial differential equations, noise-driven stochastic partial differential equations, general relativity, and geometry with singularities. A workshop held at the Erwin-Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics in Vienna investigated these questions and culminated in this volume of invited papers from experts in the fields of nonlinear partial differential equations, structure theory of generalized functions, geometry and general relativity, stochastic partial differential equations, and nonstandard analysis. The authors provide the latest research relevant to work in partial differential equations, mathematical physics, and nonlinear analysis. With a focus on applications, this books provides a compilation of recent approaches to the problem of singularities in nonlinear models. The theory of differential algebras of generalized functions serves as the central theme of the project, along with its interrelations with classical methods.

Over the past few years a certain shift of focus within the theory of algebras of generalized functions (in the sense of J. F. Colombeau) has taken place. Originating in infinite dimensional analysis and initially applied mainly to problems in nonlinear partial differential equations involving singularities, the theory has undergone a change both in in ternal structure and scope of applicability, due to a growing number of applications to questions of a more geometric nature. The present book is intended to provide an in-depth presentation of these develop ments comprising its structural aspects within the theory of generalized functions as well as a (selective but, as we hope, representative) set of applications. This main purpose of the book is accompanied by a number of sub ordinate goals which we were aiming at when arranging the material included here. First, despite the fact that by now several excellent mono graphs on Colombeau algebras are available, we have decided to give a self-contained introduction to the field in Chapter 1. Our motivation for this decision derives from two main features of our approach. On the one hand, in contrast to other treatments of the subject we base our intro duction to the field on the so-called special variant of the algebras, which makes many of the fundamental ideas of the field particularly transpar ent and at the same time facilitates and motivates the introduction of the more involved concepts treated later in the chapter.

This is the third supplementary volume to Kluwer's highly acclaimed twelve-volume Encyclopaedia of Mathematics. This additional volume contains nearly 500 new entries written by experts and covers developments and topics not included in the previous volumes. These entries are arranged alphabetically throughout and a detailed index is included. This supplementary volume enhances the existing twelve volumes, and together, these thirteen volumes represent the most authoritative, comprehensive and up-to-date Encyclopaedia of Mathematics available.

This volume contains papers based on some of the talks given at the NSF-CBMS conference on ``The Geometrical Study of Differential Equations'' held at Howard University (Washington, DC). The collected papers present important recent developments in this area, including the treatment of nontransversal group actions in the theory of group invariant solutions of PDEs, a method for obtaining discrete symmetries of differential equations, the establishment of a group-invariant version of the variational complex based on a general moving frame construction, the introduction of a new variational complex for the calculus of difference equations and an original structural investigation of Lie-Backlund transformations. The book opens with a modern and illuminating overview of Lie's line-sphere correspondence and concludes with several interesting open problems arising from symmetry analysis of PDEs. It offers a rich source of inspiration for new or established researchers in the field. This book can serve nicely as a companion volume to a forthcoming book written by the principle speaker at the conference, Professor Niky Kamran, to be published in the AMS series, CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics.