Grothendieck’s beautiful theory of schemes permeates modern algebraic geometry and underlies its applications to number theory, physics, and applied mathematics. This simple account of that theory emphasizes and explains the universal geometric concepts behind the definitions. In the book, concepts are illustrated with fundamental examples, and explicit calculations show how the constructions of scheme theory are carried out in practice.

This book introduces the reader to modern algebraic geometry. It presents Grothendieck's technically demanding language of schemes that is the basis of the most important developments in the last fifty years within this area. A systematic treatment and motivation of the theory is emphasized, using concrete examples to illustrate its usefulness. Several examples from the realm of Hilbert modular surfaces and of determinantal varieties are used methodically to discuss the covered techniques. Thus the reader experiences that the further development of the theory yields an ever better understanding of these fascinating objects. The text is complemented by many exercises that serve to check the comprehension of the text, treat further examples, or give an outlook on further results. The volume at hand is an introduction to schemes. To get startet, it requires only basic knowledge in abstract algebra and topology. Essential facts from commutative algebra are assembled in an appendix. It will be complemented by a second volume on the cohomology of schemes.

This book completes the comprehensive introduction to modern algebraic geometry which was started with the introductory volume Algebraic Geometry I: Schemes. It begins by discussing in detail the notions of smooth, unramified and étale morphisms including the étale fundamental group. The main part is dedicated to the cohomology of quasi-coherent sheaves. The treatment is based on the formalism of derived categories which allows an efficient and conceptual treatment of the theory, which is of crucial importance in all areas of algebraic geometry. After the foundations are set up, several more advanced topics are studied, such as numerical intersection theory, an abstract version of the Theorem of Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch, the Theorem on Formal Functions, Grothendieck's algebraization results and a very general version of Grothendieck duality. The book concludes with chapters on curves and on abelian schemes, which serve to develop the basics of the theory of these two important classes of schemes on an advanced level, and at the same time to illustrate the power of the techniques introduced previously. The text contains many exercises that allow the reader to check their comprehension of the text, present further examples or give an outlook on further results.

This book, which studies the links between mathematics and philosophy, highlights a reversal. Initially, the (Greek) philosophers were also mathematicians (geometers). Their vision of the world stemmed from their research in this field (rational and irrational numbers, problem of duplicating the cube, trisection of the angle...). Subsequently, mathematicians freed themselves from philosophy (with Analysis, differential Calculus, Algebra, Topology, etc.), but their researches continued to inspire philosophers (Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, Husserl, etc.). However, from a certain level of complexity, the mathematicians themselves became philosophers (a movement that begins with Wronsky and Clifford, and continues until Grothendieck).

Semi-Infinite Geometry is a theory of "doubly infinite-dimensional" geometric or topological objects. In this book the author explains what should be meant by an algebraic variety of semi-infinite nature. Then he applies the framework of semiderived categories, suggested in his previous monograph titled Homological Algebra of Semimodules and Semicontramodules, (Birkhäuser, 2010), to the study of semi-infinite algebraic varieties. Quasi-coherent torsion sheaves and flat pro-quasi-coherent pro-sheaves on ind-schemes are discussed at length in this book, making it suitable for use as an introduction to the theory of quasi-coherent sheaves on ind-schemes. The main output of the homological theory developed in this monograph is the functor of semitensor product on the semiderived category of quasi-coherent torsion sheaves, endowing the semiderived category with the structure of a tensor triangulated category. The author offers two equivalent constructions of the semitensor product, as well as its particular case, the cotensor product, and shows that they enjoy good invariance properties. Several geometric examples are discussed in detail in the book, including the cotangent bundle to an infinite-dimensional projective space, the universal fibration of quadratic cones, and the important popular example of the loop group of an affine algebraic group.

This book introduces the reader to modern algebraic geometry. It presents Grothendieck's technically demanding language of schemes that is the basis of the most important developments in the last fifty years within this area. A systematic treatment and motivation of the theory is emphasized, using concrete examples to illustrate its usefulness. Several examples from the realm of Hilbert modular surfaces and of determinantal varieties are used methodically to discuss the covered techniques. Thus the reader experiences that the further development of the theory yields an ever better understanding of these fascinating objects. The text is complemented by many exercises that serve to check the comprehension of the text, treat further examples, or give an outlook on further results. The volume at hand is an introduction to schemes. To get startet, it requires only basic knowledge in abstract algebra and topology. Essential facts from commutative algebra are assembled in an appendix. It will be complemented by a second volume on the cohomology of schemes.

The book of invited articles offers a collection of high-quality papers in selected and highly topical areas of Applied and Numerical Mathematics and Approximation Theory which have some connection to Wolfgang Dahmen's scientific work. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, leading experts have contributed survey and research papers in the areas of Nonlinear Approximation Theory, Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential and Integral Equations, Computer-Aided Geometric Design, and Learning Theory. The main focus and common theme of all the articles in this volume is the mathematics building the foundation for most efficient numerical algorithms for simulating complex phenomena.

This book aims first to prove the local Langlands conjecture for GLn over a p-adic field and, second, to identify the action of the decomposition group at a prime of bad reduction on the l-adic cohomology of the "simple" Shimura varieties. These two problems go hand in hand. The results represent a major advance in algebraic number theory, finally proving the conjecture first proposed in Langlands's 1969 Washington lecture as a non-abelian generalization of local class field theory. The local Langlands conjecture for GLn(K), where K is a p-adic field, asserts the existence of a correspondence, with certain formal properties, relating n-dimensional representations of the Galois group of K with the representation theory of the locally compact group GLn(K). This book constructs a candidate for such a local Langlands correspondence on the vanishing cycles attached to the bad reduction over the integer ring of K of a certain family of Shimura varieties. And it proves that this is roughly compatible with the global Galois correspondence realized on the cohomology of the same Shimura varieties. The local Langlands conjecture is obtained as a corollary. Certain techniques developed in this book should extend to more general Shimura varieties, providing new instances of the local Langlands conjecture. Moreover, the geometry of the special fibers is strictly analogous to that of Shimura curves and can be expected to have applications to a variety of questions in number theory.

‘Subdivision’ is a way of representing smooth shapes in a computer. A curve or surface (both of which contain an in?nite number of points) is described in terms of two objects. One object is a sequence of vertices, which we visualise as a polygon, for curves, or a network of vertices, which we visualise by drawing the edges or faces of the network, for surfaces. The other object is a set of rules for making denser sequences or networks. When applied repeatedly, the denser and denser sequences are claimed to converge to a limit, which is the curve or surface that we want to represent. This book focusses on curves, because the theory for that is complete enough that a book claiming that our understanding is complete is exactly what is needed to stimulate research proving that claim wrong. Also because there are already a number of good books on subdivision surfaces. The way in which the limit curve relates to the polygon, and a lot of interesting properties of the limit curve, depend on the set of rules, and this book is about how one can deduce those properties from the set of rules, and how one can then use that understanding to construct rules which give the properties that one wants.

This book contains a series of papers on some of the longstanding research problems of geometry, calculus of variations, and their applications. It is suitable for advanced graduate students, teachers, research mathematicians, and other professionals in mathematics.