Automorphisms of Surfaces After Nielsen and Thurston

Automorphisms of Surfaces After Nielsen and Thurston
Author: Andrew J. Casson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1988-08-18
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780521349857

A comprehensive introduction to selected aspects of modern low-dimensional topology for readers with a knowledge of basic algebra.

Trees of Hyperbolic Spaces

Trees of Hyperbolic Spaces
Author: Michael Kapovich
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2024-08-15
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1470474255

This book offers an alternative proof of the Bestvina?Feighn combination theorem for trees of hyperbolic spaces and describes uniform quasigeodesics in such spaces. As one of the applications of their description of uniform quasigeodesics, the authors prove the existence of Cannon?Thurston maps for inclusion maps of total spaces of subtrees of hyperbolic spaces and of relatively hyperbolic spaces. They also analyze the structure of Cannon?Thurston laminations in this setting. Furthermore, some group-theoretic applications of these results are discussed. This book also contains background material on coarse geometry and geometric group theory.

Geometry, Topology and Dynamics of Character Varieties

Geometry, Topology and Dynamics of Character Varieties
Author: William Mark Goldman
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2012
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9814401358

This book aims to describe, for readers uneducated in science, the development of humanity's desire to know and understand the world around us through the various stages of its development to the present, when science is almost universally recognized - at least in the Western world - as the most reliable way of knowing. The book describes the history of the large-scale exploration of the surface of the earth by sea, beginning with the Vikings and the Chinese, and of the unknown interiors of the American and African continents by foot and horseback. After the invention of the telescope, visual exploration of the surfaces of the Moon and Mars were made possible, and finally a visit to the Moon. The book then turns to our legacy from the ancient Greeks of wanting to understand rather than just know, and why the scientific way of understanding is valued. For concreteness, it relates the lives and accomplishments of six great scientists, four from the nineteenth century and two from the twentieth. Finally, the book explains how chemistry came to be seen as the most basic of the sciences, and then how physics became the most fundamental.

Handbook of Dynamical Systems

Handbook of Dynamical Systems
Author: B. Hasselblatt
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 1231
Release: 2002-08-20
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0080533442

Volumes 1A and 1B.These volumes give a comprehensive survey of dynamics written by specialists in the various subfields of dynamical systems. The presentation attains coherence through a major introductory survey by the editors that organizes the entire subject, and by ample cross-references between individual surveys.The volumes are a valuable resource for dynamicists seeking to acquaint themselves with other specialties in the field, and to mathematicians active in other branches of mathematics who wish to learn about contemporary ideas and results dynamics. Assuming only general mathematical knowledge the surveys lead the reader towards the current state of research in dynamics.Volume 1B will appear 2005.

Using the Mathematics Literature

Using the Mathematics Literature
Author: Kristine K. Fowler
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2004-05-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780824750350

This reference serves as a reader-friendly guide to every basic tool and skill required in the mathematical library and helps mathematicians find resources in any format in the mathematics literature. It lists a wide range of standard texts, journals, review articles, newsgroups, and Internet and database tools for every major subfield in mathematics and details methods of access to primary literature sources of new research, applications, results, and techniques. Using the Mathematics Literature is the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on mathematics literature in both print and electronic formats, presenting time-saving strategies for retrieval of the latest information.

Problems on Mapping Class Groups and Related Topics

Problems on Mapping Class Groups and Related Topics
Author: Benson Farb
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2006-09-12
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0821838385

The appearance of mapping class groups in mathematics is ubiquitous. The book presents 23 papers containing problems about mapping class groups, the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, Teichmuller geometry, and related areas. Each paper focusses completely on open problems and directions. The problems range in scope from specific computations, to broad programs. The goal is to have a rich source of problems which have been formulated explicitly and accessibly. The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains problems on the combinatorial and (co)homological group-theoretic aspects of mapping class groups, and the way in which these relate to problems in geometry and topology. Part II concentrates on connections with classification problems in 3-manifold theory, the theory of symplectic 4-manifolds, and algebraic geometry. A wide variety of problems, from understanding billiard trajectories to the classification of Kleinian groups, can be reduced to differential and synthetic geometry problems about moduli space. Such problems and connections are discussed in Part III. Mapping class groups are related, both concretely and philosophically, to a number of other groups, such as braid groups, lattices in semisimple Lie groups, and automorphism groups of free groups. Part IV concentrates on problems surrounding these relationships. This book should be of interest to anyone studying geometry, topology, algebraic geometry or infinite groups. It is meant to provide inspiration for everyone from graduate students to senior researchers.

Thin Groups and Superstrong Approximation

Thin Groups and Superstrong Approximation
Author: Emmanuel Breuillard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2014-02-17
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1107036852

This collection of survey articles focuses on recent developments at the boundary between geometry, dynamical systems, number theory and combinatorics.

Collected Works of William P. Thurston with Commentary

Collected Works of William P. Thurston with Commentary
Author: Benson Farb
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
Total Pages: 784
Release: 2023-06-05
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1470474727

William Thurston's work has had a profound influence on mathematics. He connected whole mathematical subjects in entirely new ways and changed the way mathematicians think about geometry, topology, foliations, group theory, dynamical systems, and the way these areas interact. His emphasis on understanding and imagination in mathematical learning and thinking are integral elements of his distinctive legacy. This four-part collection brings together in one place Thurston's major writings, many of which are appearing in publication for the first time. Volumes I–III contain commentaries by the Editors. Volume IV includes a preface by Steven P. Kerckhoff. Volume I contains William Thurston's papers on foliations, mapping classes groups, and differential geometry.

Essays in Group Theory

Essays in Group Theory
Author: S.M. Gersten
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1461395860

Essays in Group Theory contains five papers on topics of current interest which were presented in a seminar at MSRI, Berkeley in June, 1985. Special mention should be given to Gromov`s paper, one of the most significant in the field in the last decade. It develops the theory of hyperbolic groups to include a version of small cancellation theory sufficiently powerful to recover deep results of Ol'shanskii and Rips. Each of the remaining papers, by Baumslag and Shalen, Gersten, Shalen, and Stallings contains gems. For example, the reader will delight in Stallings' explicit construction of free actions of orientable surface groups on R-trees. Gersten's paper lays the foundations for a theory of equations over groups and contains a very quick solution to conjugacy problem for a class of hyperbolic groups. Shalen's article reviews the rapidly expanding theory of group actions on R-trees and the Baumslag-Shalen article uses modular representation theory to establish properties of presentations whose relators are pth-powers.

Flexibility of Group Actions on the Circle

Flexibility of Group Actions on the Circle
Author: Sang-hyun Kim
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2019-01-02
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030028550

In this partly expository work, a framework is developed for building exotic circle actions of certain classical groups. The authors give general combination theorems for indiscrete isometry groups of hyperbolic space which apply to Fuchsian and limit groups. An abundance of integer-valued subadditive defect-one quasimorphisms on these groups follow as a corollary. The main classes of groups considered are limit and Fuchsian groups. Limit groups are shown to admit large collections of faithful actions on the circle with disjoint rotation spectra. For Fuchsian groups, further flexibility results are proved and the existence of non-geometric actions of free and surface groups is established. An account is given of the extant notions of semi-conjugacy, showing they are equivalent. This book is suitable for experts interested in flexibility of representations, and for non-experts wanting an introduction to group representations into circle homeomorphism groups.