Geometry of Differential Forms (Translations of Mathematical Monographs, Vol. 201) (Translations of Mathematical Monographs)

Book Description

Since the times of Gauss, Riemann, and Poincaré, one of the principal goals of the study of manifolds has been to relate local analytic properties of a manifold with its global topological properties. Among the high points on this route are the Gauss-Bonnet formula, the de Rham complex, and the Hodge theorem; these results show, in particular, that the central tool in reaching the main goal of global analysis is the theory of differential forms.

The book by Morita is a comprehensive introduction to differential forms. It begins with a quick introduction to the notion of differentiable manifolds and then develops basic properties of differential forms as well as fundamental results concerning them, such as the de Rham and Frobenius theorems. The second half of the book is devoted to more advanced material, including Laplacians and harmonic forms on manifolds, the concepts of vector bundles and fiber bundles, and the theory of characteristic classes. Among the less traditional topics treated is a detailed description of the Chern-Weil theory.

The book can serve as a textbook for undergraduate students and for graduate students in geometry.

Customer Reviews:

Self contained introduction to techniques of classifying manifolds........2007-01-10

This text is phenomenally easy to read and well organized. The author starts you on a journey by first explaining the importance and power of classifying manifolds namely by certain invariants preserved by certain mappings ( diffeomorphisms ).

For example, like Euler, we could count the number of holes in the surface and using this combinatorial method we are led to homology theory.

Or like Gauss, we could use a differentiation and integration to come up with the idea of curvature as an intrinsic feature of the surface.

Modern approaches use differential forms to represent homology and cohomoly groups.

The author also deals with fibre bundles demonstrating their importance in analyzing manifolds specifically how the number of fibre bundles possible with given Lie groups as structure groups over the manifold can be answered by characteristic classes such as the Chern and Pontrjagin classes. The use of differential forms is indispensible.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this book is that it clarifies the notions of connection, connection form, curvature, curvature form for manifolds and fibre bundles.

There are plenty of exercises to boot.

A very good book........2005-03-28

This is probably the most clearly written self-contained book on the basics of differential geometry. The author does a great job explaining the ideas behind purely mathematical 'dry' constructions. On the other hand, everything is defined correctly and precisely. A very readable and useful book with the perfect combination of formal math. and intuition. I would recommend it to students in theoretical physics area, together with the Nakahara's fantastic book.

Torus Actions on Symplectic Manifolds (Progress in Mathematics)

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Torus Actions on Symplectic Manifolds (Progress in Mathematics)
Michèle Audin
Manufacturer: Birkhäuser Basel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3764326026

Book Description

This is an extended second edition of "The Topology of Torus Actions on Symplectic Manifolds" published in this series in 1991. The material and references have been updated. Symplectic manifolds and torus actions are investigated, with numerous examples of torus actions, for instance on some moduli spaces. Although the book is still centered on convexity theorems, it contains much more results, proofs and examples.
Chapter I deals with Lie group actions on manifolds. In Chapters II and III, symplectic geometry and Hamiltonian group actions are introduced, especially torus actions and action-angle variables. The core of the book is Chapter IV which is devoted to applications of Morse theory to Hamiltonian group actions, including convexity theorems. As a family of examples of symplectic manifolds, moduli spaces of flat connections are discussed in Chapter V. Then, Chapter VI centers on the Duistermaat-Heckman theorem. In Chapter VII, a topological construction of complex toric varieties is presented, and the last chapter illustrates the introduced methods for Hamiltonian circle actions on 4-manifolds.

Differential Geometry, Lie Groups, and Symmetric Spaces (Graduate Studies in Mathematics)

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Superb Treatise and Indispensible Reference
Unsurpassed, but demanding
Semisimple( Simple)->Bad

Differential Geometry, Lie Groups, and Symmetric Spaces (Graduate Studies in Mathematics)
Sigurdur Helgason
Manufacturer: American Mathematical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0821828487

Book Description

The study of homogeneous spaces provides excellent insights into both differential geometry and Lie groups. In geometry, for instance, general theorems and properties will also hold for homogeneous spaces, and will usually be easier to understand and to prove in this setting. For Lie groups, a significant amount of analysis either begins with or reduces to analysis on homogeneous spaces, frequently on symmetric spaces. For many years and for many mathematicians, Sigurdur Helgason's classic Differential Geometry, Lie Groups, and Symmetric Spaces has been--and continues to be--the standard source for this material.

Helgason begins with a concise, self-contained introduction to differential geometry. He then introduces Lie groups and Lie algebras, including important results on their structure. This sets the stage for the introduction and study of symmetric spaces, which form the central part of the book. The text concludes with the classification of symmetric spaces by means of the Killing-Cartan classification of simple Lie algebras over $\mathbf{C}$ and Cartan's classification of simple Lie algebras over $\mathbf{R}$.

The excellent exposition is supplemented by extensive collections of useful exercises at the end of each chapter. All the problems have either solutions or substantial hints, found at the back of the book.

For this latest edition, Helgason has made corrections and added helpful notes and useful references. The sequels to the present book are published in the AMS's Mathematical Surveys and Monographs Series: Groups and Geometric Analysis, Volume 83, and Geometric Analysis on Symmetric Spaces, Volume 39.

Sigurdur Helgason was awarded the Steele Prize for Differential Geometry, Lie Groups, and Symmetric Spaces and Groups and Geometric Analysis.

Customer Reviews:

Superb Treatise and Indispensible Reference .......2007-06-26

The mere thought or mention of the name Helgason inspires respect and awe. This book gets five stars all the way on its merit alone, regardless of who wrote it. Difficult as it is, the book starts from the fundamentals and works up in a coherent logical manner, there are no gaps in his presentation. The negative review below is completely unjustified. If anyone would like to at least see some of what this book is like go to ocw.mit.edu and download Helgason's notes which use excerpts in this book. Some of the topics in this book are covered in a more easy going way in "Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Some of Their Applications" by Robert Gilmore. (If I'm not mistaken Gilmore was a student of Helgason.) This book is mathematical exposition at it's absolute finest and I don't think but 1 in 1,000 people reading this page need me to tell them that much less need a review to persuade them. This book has quite a reputation.

Unsurpassed, but demanding.......2007-05-28

As I reviewed this book at Amazon, I found only one review, which I considered to be too harsh. You should understand that Helgason is writing a graduate textbook. Students will learn about "modules" in their graduate algebra course. They will learn De Rham's theorem in an introductory analysis course or sometimes even in a topology course (yes, it can happen). So, most of the language for which another reviewer criticized him would usually be covered in other graduate courses.

Helgason writes tersely but extremely precisely. I know of no other author who gives similar sophistication of point of view and quick, to the point, proofs. He is a "best of breed," and I suppose that is part of the reason he has been a core member of the faculty at M.I.T. for such a long time. A serious student cannot really avoid reading the entire progression of these texts, particularly the "Groups and Geometric Analysis" title, perhaps second in the Helgason manuscripts.

Semisimple( Simple)->Bad.......2007-05-13

I certainly hate being cheated.
This book is advance as a textbook for a course in Lie Algebra.
I can picture the man who wrote this book lecturing to the future great minds of MIT
and putting them to sleep.
The fellow is the worst sort of pedant.
On page one he mentions one of the more difficult theorems in modern Mathematics,
De Rham's theorem, then drops it like it was too hot to handle.
On page three he introduces Hausdorff's difficult separation axiom
without any explanation at all.
Throughout the book he beats you over the head with terms like "module"
without adequate definition or explanation of terms.
He literally expects you to have learned
what he is supposed to be teaching
before you take his course?
In short , anyone taking the course with this book as a text book
will be hunting for a good text on Lie AlgebraSemi-Simple Lie Algebras and Their Representations (Dover Books on Mathematics) Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Some of Their Applications
and differential geometry,
since this one is entirely unreadable,
even by those who know and love the subjects.

Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint

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Exactly would it should be
best math book ever written
Compact and useful
Yet another popular (YAP) Math text
Take full advantage of the clear, encompassing exposition:

Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint
John Willard Milnor
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691048339

Book Description

This elegant book by distinguished mathematician John Milnor, provides a clear and succinct introduction to one of the most important subjects in modern mathematics. Beginning with basic concepts such as diffeomorphisms and smooth manifolds, he goes on to examine tangent spaces, oriented manifolds, and vector fields. Key concepts such as homotopy, the index number of a map, and the Pontryagin construction are discussed. The author presents proofs of Sard's theorem and the Hopf theorem.

Customer Reviews:

Exactly would it should be.......2005-12-30

I would suggest to use this book as a companion to more serious books on topology. Weighing in at a mere 51 pages, this book accomplishes what it needs to: a brief, succinct introduction to topology mostly based on the work of Brouwer. There is a nice mixture of topics, ranging from Sard's theorem to Poincare-Hopf theorem. The proofs and ideas are not fully rigorous or developed, but that would be quite a bit to expect from such a short exposition.

best math book ever written.......2005-02-11

Despite the lovely subject matter covered in this book, it more importanty gives one a taste of Mathematics as an intellectual discipline. It in outline shows how a mathematical theory - in this case Differential Topology - is constructed and consquently what mathematicians actually do and think about.
Anyone who would like to appreciate Mathematics as a field of study rather than just learn some math should open this book.

Better still, the prerequisite is only multivariate calculus!I have long thought this book should be the third year of calculus rather than differential equations or complex analysis.

Additionally, for the novice it is the only entry I know of into the mysteries of high dimensional geometry, that amazing almost unbelieveable accomplishment of the human mind.

There is a Star Trek episode in which a blind woman wears a dress of sensors which enable her to know more about her environment than a person can know from seeing. She knows exact distances and dimensions, can detect minute movements, can process the complete spectrum of light. In some sense she sees better. Modern topology and geometry are like that sensor dress for seeing higher dimensions. While we can not visualize the sphere in 5 dimensions, we know more about it from these mathematical theories than a five dimensionally sighted being ever could.

Today, mathematics is often considered to be just a practical tool - like a spread sheet - or a toaster oven. We forget its power to widen our imagination, to frame the unimaginable. This book reminds us of this and shows why Mathematics is the Queen of Sciences.

Compact and useful.......2005-01-29

This book packs a lot of interesting material into a small volume. E.g., I picked up another book recently that started talking about cobordisms right off the bat; despite my having a couple of shelves full of well-known Dover, Springer, Cambridge UP etc. books on topology, differential geometry, mathematical physics, etc., Milnor's tiny book was the only one I found that could help me understand what cobordisms are right away. The book also uses many illustrations to help understanding.

I demote this to 4 stars only because Princeton UP's price is a bit high; many years ago I was lucky enough to find a used copy of the old U. Virginia edition, and paid much less.

Yet another popular (YAP) Math text.......2004-12-01

In all practicality, for general math students this book is nice for the library, but by no means is it essential. In fact, it's not worth the $25 in most cases. There are so many outstanding Math texts / topics out there, it is doubtful and political that Milnor's Differential Viewpoint deserves its popularity.

I found this book helpful as supplementary reading for Calculus on Manifolds, so I am a minority student. (Majority student = Linear Algebra Done Right.) Spivak's book motivated the need to look carefully at the first few sections of Milnor's book. The definitions in Milnor coincide perfectly with Spivak.

I left Milnor's book with a good intuition about the inverse function theorem, manifolds, and the rank theorem. I also gave a small study to Sard's Theorem, but I had no need to venture into what apparently was the meat of the book...

It is arguable that the Inverse Function Theorem, Manifolds, and the Rank Theorem alone warrant buying this book, despite it only represents the first 2 sections of it, and is far from the total purpose of the book. Nonetheless, that's all I wanted to gain at the time I was reading it.

On the other hand, if you really are a Differential Topology student (small minority), you are the one who wouldn't need the review because you would know what you are trying to get from the book.

On the other hand, students who buy this book who don't know why will probably do nothing more than collect dust with it.

Take full advantage of the clear, encompassing exposition:.......2003-05-18

Do the exercises. Many were Ph.D. dissertation-level problems in the 1960s; today, they're aptly described as "elementary"- because Milnor MADE them elementary.

This book forms part of the toolkit you will need to fully explore the more modern work in dynamics, complexity, and applications (e.g., economics, physics).

Book Description

From the reviews: "This is a very interesting book containing material for a comprehensive study of the cyclid homological theory of algebras, cyclic sets and S1-spaces. Lie algebras and algebraic K-theory and an introduction to Connes'work and recent results on the Novikov conjecture. The book requires a knowledge of homological algebra and Lie algebra theory as well as basic technics coming from algebraic topology. The bibliographic comments at the end of each chapter offer good suggestions for further reading and research. The book can be strongly recommended to anybody interested in noncommutative geometry, contemporary algebraic topology and related topics." European Mathematical Society Newsletter

In this second edition the authors have added a chapter 13 on MacLane (co)homology.

Customer Reviews:

very comprehensive treatment on the subject.......2004-02-21

I think that this is probably the only comprehensive book on the subject. There are several lecture notes published, but no other books have collected all up to date recent research results on the subject like this book did. Probably must-read classical book if you are interested in cyclic homology, or if you want to use it for you research. Very unfortunate fact is that this book is very rare, so that very hard to obtain. You may have lots of trouble buying this book.

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This is where it started
Excellent introduction to fiber bundles
Still attractive.

The Topology of Fibre Bundles. (PMS-14)
Norman Steenrod
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691005486

Book Description

Fibre bundles, now an integral part of differential geometry, are also of great importance in modern physics--such as in gauge theory. This book, a succinct introduction to the subject by renown mathematician Norman Steenrod, was the first to present the subject systematically.

It begins with a general introduction to bundles, including such topics as differentiable manifolds and covering spaces. The author then provides brief surveys of advanced topics, such as homotopy theory and cohomology theory, before using them to study further properties of fibre bundles. The result is a classic and timeless work of great utility that will appeal to serious mathematicians and theoretical physicists alike.

Customer Reviews:

This is where it started.......2002-06-26

For those individuals who want an in-depth, insightful, and solid understanding of fiber bundles this book must be read. In spite of its date of publication, it still is of considerable value in this regard. Modern treatments of fiber bundles are very formal and the underlying motivation gets swept away in the thirst for rigor. Fiber bundles are now ubiquitous in differential topology, algebraic topology, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry, and have also found a place in theoretical physics, thanks to the success of gauge field theories. Therefore a mastery of fiber bundles is essential for entering any of these fields. But fiber bundles are fascinating objects in and of themselves, and studying them for their own sake needs no apology.

The author does use some antiquated notation, but that is not really a hindrance to the study of the book. The reader will no doubt have some background in differential geometry and topology before attempting this book, so the appropriate translation to more modern notation should be straightforward. Once started, and with a little thought adjustment to the idiosyncracies of the author's writing style, the reader will find a plethora of neat examples and insights into the subject. In particular, part 3 on the cohomology theory of bundles is exceptionally valuable in that it gives the reader a detailed overview of the origin of what are not called Stiefel-Whitney classes. The theory of characteristic classes has of course advanced and matured extensively since this book first appeared, but all of the modern treatments are lacking in that they do not give the reader an appreciation of the fundamentals of the subject. Indeed, the construction of the obstruction to the construction of a cross-section to a bundle is the starting point for many of the ideas in obstruction theory that one finds in differential topology. And yes, the procedures the author uses can be "cleaned-up" and made more concise, but the price one pays in such an endeavor is the loss of an appreciation of the concepts behind the scene.

Since the book is a monograph, there are no exercises, and this is probably the only minus to the book. Also, some knowledge of the German language would be useful to a reader who has it, since the author makes references to papers written in German and much of the terminology in the book shows its roots in the German language. One good example of this is the Reidemeister theory of cohomology groups based on a bundle of coefficients, called Uberdeckung by Reidemeister.

There is no question as to why this book remains in print, and it will no doubt continue to be well into the 21st century. IT is a good example of the idea that something new may not be something better. After finishing it, the reader will be amply prepared to enter into the continually-evolving theory of fiber bundles and their applications, all of which are interesting and important.

Excellent introduction to fiber bundles.......2002-02-25

This book supplies a lot of intuition and background that more modern texts seem to assume of the reader. Steenrod's writing is meticulous and extremely clear. My opinion is that one can learn just as much out of this seemingly outdated text and probably even more than from the modern texts.

... True, more slick machinery has been developed since Steenrod's time, but those big machines are hardly transparent. Steenrod assumes very little of the reader; he even has a quick course in homotopy groups, although he assumes the reader knows the basics of homology/cohomology. Perhaps most importantly, since many of the ideas in the book were new at the time, he doesn't assume that the reader is already comfortable with those ideas. All together this makes a very accessible book indeed.

Still attractive........1999-11-22

A nostalgic but still attractive book on (homotoy theory of) fiber bundles. This book is not very accessible as it predates the development of modern machinery of algebraic topology, but is worth reading.

$J$-holomorphic Curves and Symplectic Topology (Colloquium Publications (Amer Mathematical Soc))

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$J$-holomorphic Curves and Symplectic Topology (Colloquium Publications (Amer Mathematical Soc))
Dusa McDuff , and Dietmar Salamon
Manufacturer: American Mathematical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0821834851

Book Description

The theory of $J$-holomorphic curves has been of great importance since its introduction by Gromov in 1985. Its mathematical applications include many key results in symplectic topology. It was also one of the main inspirations for the creation of Floer homology. In mathematical physics, it provides a natural context in which to define Gromov-Witten invariants and quantum cohomology--two important ingredients of the mirror symmetry conjecture.

Book Description

This text provides an introduction to basic concepts in differential topology, differential geometry, and differential equations, and some of the main basic theorems in all three areas: for instance, the existence, uniqueness, and smoothness theorems for differential equations and the flow of a vector field; the basic theory of vector bundles including the existence of tubular neighborhoods for a submanifold; the calculus of differential forms; basic notions of symplectic manifolds, including the canonical 2-form; sprays and covariant derivatives for Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds; applications to the exponential map, including the Cartan-Hadamard theorem and the first basic theorem of calculus of variations. Although the book grew out of the author's earlier book "Differential and Riemannian Manifolds", the focus has now changed from the general theory of manifolds to general differential geometry, and includes new chapters on Jacobi lifts, tensorial splitting of the double tangent bundle, curvature and the variation formula, a generalization of the Cartan-Hadamard theorem, the semiparallelogram law of Bruhat-Tits and its equivalence with seminegative curvature and the exponential map distance increasing property, a major example of seminegative curvature (the space of positive definite symmetric real matrices), automorphisms and symmetries, and immersions and submersions. These are all covered for infinite-dimensional manifolds, modeled on Banach and Hilbert Spaces, at no cost in complications, and some gain in the elegance of the proofs. In the finite-dimensional case, differential forms of top degree are discussed, leading to Stokes' theorem (even for manifolds with singular boundary), and several of its applications to the differential or Riemannian case. Basic formulas concerning the Laplacian are given, exhibiting several of its features in immersions and submersions.

Customer Reviews:

Complete but lacking unity.......2000-03-29

This book looks more like a big collection of essays than really a treatise on one subject. If you have read other books by Lang you will notice that some material included in previous works appears reproduced here word by word. Also, there are some inconsistencies in the notation of different sections, making it obvious that different parts of the book were written at different times, and perhaps by different persons.

All these shortcomings don't mean that the book is bad. Quite the opposite: It is a very complete survey on modern differential geometry, including from the fundamentals up to recent results. The graduate student and the working mathematician will find it very useful.

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Knots, Links, Braids and 3-Manifolds: An Introduction to the New Invariants in Low-Dimensional Topology (Translations of Mathematical Monographs)
V. V. Prasolov , and A. B. Sossinsky
Manufacturer: Amer Mathematical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Some of Their Applications

ASIN: 0821808982

Book Description

This book is an introduction to the remarkable work of Vaughan Jones and Victor Vassiliev on knot and link invariants and its recent modifications and generalizations, including a mathematical treatment of Jones-Witten invariants. It emphasizes the geometric aspects of the theory and treats topics such as braids, homeomorphisms of surfaces, surgery of 3-manifolds (Kirby calculus), and branched coverings. This attractive geometric material, interesting in itself yet not previously gathered in book form, constitutes the basis of the last two chapters, where the Jones-Witten invariants are constructed via the rigorous skein algebra approach (mainly due to the Saint Petersburg school).

Book Description

A classic available again! This book traces the history of algebraic topology beginning with its creation by Henry Poincaré in 1900, and describing in detail the important ideas introduced in the theory before 1960. In its first thirty years the field seemed limited to applications in algebraic geometry, but this changed dramatically in the 1930s with the creation of differential topology by Georges De Rham and Elie Cartan and of homotopy theory by Witold Hurewicz and Heinz Hopf. The influence of topology began to spread to more and more branches as it gradually took on a central place in mathematics. Written by a world-renowned mathematician, this book will make exciting reading for anyone working with topology.

Customer Reviews:

More than a mere "history"........2000-03-03

This book painstakingly describes and explains algebraic topology in the chronological order of its development. I quite agree with Glen Bredon's remark in his "Geometry and Topology" that goes like "this is more than a history and should be in the bookshelf of every student of topology" (not word-for-word, as the citation is done offhand).

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