This book highlights a number of recent research advances in the field of symplectic and contact geometry and topology, and related areas in low-dimensional topology. This field has experienced significant and exciting growth in the past few decades, and this volume provides an accessible introduction into many active research problems in this area. The papers were written with a broad audience in mind so as to reach a wide range of mathematicians at various levels. Aside from teaching readers about developing research areas, this book will inspire researchers to ask further questions to continue to advance the field. The volume contains both original results and survey articles, presenting the results of collaborative research on a wide range of topics. These projects began at the Research Collaboration Conference for Women in Symplectic and Contact Geometry and Topology (WiSCon) in July 2019 at ICERM, Brown University. Each group of authors included female and nonbinary mathematicians at different career levels in mathematics and with varying areas of expertise. This paved the way for new connections between mathematicians at all career levels, spanning multiple continents, and resulted in the new collaborations and directions that are featured in this work.

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

Although contact geometry and topology is briefly discussed in V I Arnol''d''s book Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics (Springer-Verlag, 1989, 2nd edition), it still remains a domain of research in pure mathematics, e.g. see the recent monograph by H Geiges An Introduction to Contact Topology (Cambridge U Press, 2008). Some attempts to use contact geometry in physics were made in the monograph Contact Geometry and Nonlinear Differential Equations (Cambridge U Press, 2007). Unfortunately, even the excellent style of this monograph is not sufficient to attract the attention of the physics community to this type of problems. This book is the first serious attempt to change the existing status quo. In it we demonstrate that, in fact, all branches of theoretical physics can be rewritten in the language of contact geometry and topology: from mechanics, thermodynamics and electrodynamics to optics, gauge fields and gravity; from physics of liquid crystals to quantum mechanics and quantum computers, etc. The book is written in the style of famous Landau-Lifshitz (L-L) multivolume course in theoretical physics. This means that its readers are expected to have solid background in theoretical physics (at least at the level of the L-L course). No prior knowledge of specialized mathematics is required. All needed new mathematics is given in the context of discussed physical problems. As in the L-L course some problems/exercises are formulated along the way and, again as in the L-L course, these are always supplemented by either solutions or by hints (with exact references). Unlike the L-L course, though, some definitions, theorems, and remarks are also presented. This is done with the purpose of stimulating the interest of our readers in deeper study of subject matters discussed in the text.

The papers presented in this volume are written by participants of the ''Symplectic and Contact Topology, Quantum Cohomology, and Symplectic Field Theory'' symposium. The workshop was part of a semester-long joint venture of The Fields Institute in Toronto and the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques in Montreal. The twelve papers cover the following topics: Symplectic Topology, the interaction between symplectic and other geometric structures, and Differential Geometry and Topology. The Proceeding concludes with two papers that have a more algebraic character. One is related to the program of Homological Mirror Symmetry: the author defines a category of extended complex manifolds and studies its properties. The subject of the final paper is Non-commutative Symplectic Geometry, in particular the structure of the symplectomorphism group of a non-commutative complex plane. The in-depth articles make this book a useful reference for graduate students as well as research mathematicians.

This volume represents the proceedings of the Noncommutative Geometry Workshop that was held as part of the thematic program on operator algebras at the Fields Institute in May 2008. Pioneered by Alain Connes starting in the late 1970s, noncommutative geometry was originally inspired by global analysis, topology, operator algebras, and quantum physics. Its main applications were to settle some long-standing conjectures, such as the Novikov conjecture and the Baum-Connes conjecture. Next came the impact of spectral geometry and the way the spectrum of a geometric operator, like the Laplacian, holds information about the geometry and topology of a manifold, as in the celebrated Weyl law. This has now been vastly generalized through Connes' notion of spectral triples. Finally, recent years have witnessed the impact of number theory, algebraic geometry and the theory of motives, and quantum field theory on noncommutative geometry. Almost all of these aspects are touched upon with new results in the papers of this volume. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers in both mathematics and theoretical physics who are interested in noncommutative geometry and its applications.

This is a collection of surveys on important mathematical ideas, their origin, their evolution and their impact in current research. The authors are mathematicians who are leading experts in their fields. The book is addressed to all mathematicians, from undergraduate students to senior researchers, regardless of the specialty.

The book introduces the basic notions in Symplectic and Contact Geometry at the level of the second year graduate student. It also contains many exercises, some of which are solved only in the last chapter.We begin with the linear theory, then give the definition of symplectic manifolds and some basic examples, review advanced calculus, discuss Hamiltonian systems, tour rapidly group and the basics of contact geometry, and solve problems in chapter 8. The material just described can be used as a one semester course on Symplectic and Contact Geometry.The book contains also more advanced material, suitable to advanced graduate students and researchers.

Over the last number of years powerful new methods in analysis and topology have led to the development of the modern global theory of symplectic topology, including several striking and important results. This new third edition of a classic book in the feild includes updates and new material to bring the material right up-to-date.

Among all the Hamiltonian systems, the integrable ones have special geometric properties; in particular, their solutions are very regular and quasi-periodic. This book serves as an introduction to symplectic and contact geometry for graduate students, exploring the underlying geometry of integrable Hamiltonian systems. Includes exercises designed to complement the expositiont, and up-to-date references.

The method of using the moduli space of pseudo-holomorphic curves on a symplectic manifold was introduced by Mikhail Gromov in 1985. From the appearance of Gromov's original paper until today this approach has been the most important tool in global symplectic geometry. To produce numerical invariants of these manifolds using this method requires constructing a fundamental cycle associated with moduli spaces. This volume brings together three approaches to constructing the “virtual” fundamental cycle for the moduli space of pseudo-holomorphic curves. All approaches are based on the idea of local Kuranishi charts for the moduli space. Workers in the field will get a comprehensive understanding of the details of these constructions and the assumptions under which they can be made. These techniques and results will be essential in further applications of this approach to producing invariants of symplectic manifolds.