Geometry, Topology, & Physics for Raoul Bott

Geometry, Topology, & Physics for Raoul Bott
Author: Shing-Tung Yau
Publisher: International Press of Boston
Total Pages: 558
Release: 1995
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN:

In 1993, a conference was held honouring mathematician Raoul Bott on his 70th birthday. The lectures given at this conference, along with other important mathematical contributions, are presented in this volume in honour of Raoul Bott.

The Geometry and Physics of Knots

The Geometry and Physics of Knots
Author: Michael Francis Atiyah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1990-08-23
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780521395540

These notes deal with an area that lies at the crossroads of mathematics and physics and rest primarily on the pioneering work of Vaughan Jones and Edward Witten, who related polynomial invariants of knots to a topological quantum field theory in 2+1 dimensions.

Topology And Physics

Topology And Physics
Author: Chen Ning Yang
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2019-01-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9813278684

'The book is an engaging and influential collection of significant contributions from an assembly of world expert leaders and pioneers from different fields, working at the interface between topology and physics or applications of topology to physical systems … The book explores many interesting and novel topics that lie at the intersection between gravity, quantum fields, condensed matter, physical cosmology and topology … A rich, well-organized, and comprehensive overview of remarkable and insightful connections between physics and topology is here made available to the physics reader.'Contemporary PhysicsSince its birth in Poincaré's seminal 1894 'Analysis Situs', topology has become a cornerstone of mathematics. As with all beautiful mathematical concepts, topology inevitably — resonating with that Wignerian principle of the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences — finds its prominent role in physics. From Chern-Simons theory to topological quantum field theory, from knot invariants to Calabi-Yau compactification in string theory, from spacetime topology in cosmology to the recent Nobel Prize winning work on topological insulators, the interactions between topology and physics have been a triumph over the past few decades.In this eponymous volume, we are honoured to have contributions from an assembly of grand masters of the field, guiding us with their world-renowned expertise on the subject of the interplay between 'Topology' and 'Physics'. Beginning with a preface by Chen Ning Yang on his recollections of the early days, we proceed to a novel view of nuclei from the perspective of complex geometry by Sir Michael Atiyah and Nick Manton, followed by an entrée toward recent developments in two-dimensional gravity and intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces by Robbert Dijkgraaf and Edward Witten; a study of Majorana fermions and relations to the Braid group by Louis H Kauffman; a pioneering investigation on arithmetic gauge theory by Minhyong Kim; an anecdote-enriched review of singularity theorems in black-hole physics by Sir Roger Penrose; an adventure beyond anyons by Zhenghan Wang; an aperçu on topological insulators from first-principle calculations by Haijun Zhang and Shou-Cheng Zhang; finishing with synopsis on quantum information theory as one of the four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution by Xiao-Gang Wen. We hope that this book will serve to inspire the research community.

Mathematics Related to Physics

Mathematics Related to Physics
Author: Raoul Bott
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1994-12-19
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780817636487

The Collected Papers of Raoul Bott are contained in five volumes, with each volume covering a different subject and each representing approximately a decade of Bott's work. The volumes are: Volume 1: Topology and Lie Groups (1950's) Volume 2: Differential Operators (1960's) Volume 3: Foliations (1970's) Volume 4: Mathematics Related to Physics (1980's) Volume 5: Completive Articles and Additional Biographic Material (1990's) Most of the papers in this volume deal with two physical-inspired themes: the Yang-Mills equations and the rigidity phenomena of vector bundles. It also contains Bott's own commentaries on a few of the papers, as well as a tribute by Clifford Taubes.

Topology and Geometry

Topology and Geometry
Author: Glen E. Bredon
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 580
Release: 1993-06-24
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0387979263

This book offers an introductory course in algebraic topology. Starting with general topology, it discusses differentiable manifolds, cohomology, products and duality, the fundamental group, homology theory, and homotopy theory. From the reviews: "An interesting and original graduate text in topology and geometry...a good lecturer can use this text to create a fine course....A beginning graduate student can use this text to learn a great deal of mathematics."—-MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS

Differential Geometry

Differential Geometry
Author: Loring W. Tu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2017-06-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319550845

This text presents a graduate-level introduction to differential geometry for mathematics and physics students. The exposition follows the historical development of the concepts of connection and curvature with the goal of explaining the Chern–Weil theory of characteristic classes on a principal bundle. Along the way we encounter some of the high points in the history of differential geometry, for example, Gauss' Theorema Egregium and the Gauss–Bonnet theorem. Exercises throughout the book test the reader’s understanding of the material and sometimes illustrate extensions of the theory. Initially, the prerequisites for the reader include a passing familiarity with manifolds. After the first chapter, it becomes necessary to understand and manipulate differential forms. A knowledge of de Rham cohomology is required for the last third of the text. Prerequisite material is contained in author's text An Introduction to Manifolds, and can be learned in one semester. For the benefit of the reader and to establish common notations, Appendix A recalls the basics of manifold theory. Additionally, in an attempt to make the exposition more self-contained, sections on algebraic constructions such as the tensor product and the exterior power are included. Differential geometry, as its name implies, is the study of geometry using differential calculus. It dates back to Newton and Leibniz in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century, with the work of Gauss on surfaces and Riemann on the curvature tensor, that differential geometry flourished and its modern foundation was laid. Over the past one hundred years, differential geometry has proven indispensable to an understanding of the physical world, in Einstein's general theory of relativity, in the theory of gravitation, in gauge theory, and now in string theory. Differential geometry is also useful in topology, several complex variables, algebraic geometry, complex manifolds, and dynamical systems, among other fields. The field has even found applications to group theory as in Gromov's work and to probability theory as in Diaconis's work. It is not too far-fetched to argue that differential geometry should be in every mathematician's arsenal.

Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology

Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology
Author: Raoul Bott
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475739516

Developed from a first-year graduate course in algebraic topology, this text is an informal introduction to some of the main ideas of contemporary homotopy and cohomology theory. The materials are structured around four core areas: de Rham theory, the Cech-de Rham complex, spectral sequences, and characteristic classes. By using the de Rham theory of differential forms as a prototype of cohomology, the machineries of algebraic topology are made easier to assimilate. With its stress on concreteness, motivation, and readability, this book is equally suitable for self-study and as a one-semester course in topology.

Geometry and Physics

Geometry and Physics
Author: Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2018
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0198802013

Nigel Hitchin is one of the world's foremost figures in the fields of differential and algebraic geometry and their relations with mathematical physics, and he has been Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford since 1997. Geometry and Physics: A Festschrift in honour of Nigel Hitchin contain the proceedings of the conferences held in September 2016 in Aarhus, Oxford, and Madrid to mark Nigel Hitchin's 70th birthday, and to honour his far-reaching contributions to geometry and mathematical physics. These texts contain 29 articles by contributors to the conference and other distinguished mathematicians working in related areas, including three Fields Medallists. The articles cover a broad range of topics in differential, algebraic and symplectic geometry, and also in mathematical physics. These volumes will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in geometry and mathematical physics.

The Geometry of Physics

The Geometry of Physics
Author: Theodore Frankel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 749
Release: 2011-11-03
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1139505610

This book provides a working knowledge of those parts of exterior differential forms, differential geometry, algebraic and differential topology, Lie groups, vector bundles and Chern forms that are essential for a deeper understanding of both classical and modern physics and engineering. Included are discussions of analytical and fluid dynamics, electromagnetism (in flat and curved space), thermodynamics, the Dirac operator and spinors, and gauge fields, including Yang–Mills, the Aharonov–Bohm effect, Berry phase and instanton winding numbers, quarks and quark model for mesons. Before discussing abstract notions of differential geometry, geometric intuition is developed through a rather extensive introduction to the study of surfaces in ordinary space. The book is ideal for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of physics, engineering or mathematics as a course text or for self study. This third edition includes an overview of Cartan's exterior differential forms, which previews many of the geometric concepts developed in the text.