Bücher veröffentlicht von Birkhauser Boston

Dirac operators play an important role in several domains of mathematics and physics, for example: index theory, elliptic pseudodifferential operators, electromagnetism, particle physics, and the representation theory of Lie groups. In this essentially self-contained work, the basic ideas underlying the concept of Dirac operators are explored. Starting with Clifford algebras and the fundamentals of differential geometry, the text focuses on two main properties, namely, conformal invariance, which determines the local behavior of the operator, and the unique continuation property dominating its global behavior. Spin groups and spinor bundles are covered, as well as the relations with their classical counterparts, orthogonal groups and Clifford bundles. The chapters on Clifford algebras and the fundamentals of differential geometry can be used as an introduction to the above topics, and are suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate students. The other chapters are also accessible at this level so that this text requires very little previous knowledge of the domains covered. The reader will benefit, however, from some knowledge of complex analysis, which gives the simplest example of a Dirac operator. More advanced readers---mathematical physicists, physicists and mathematicians from diverse areas---will appreciate the fresh approach to the theory as well as the new results on boundary value theory.

The 37 expository articles in this volume provide broad coverage of important topics relating to the theory, methods, and applications of goodness-of-fit tests and model validity. The book is divided into eight parts, each of which presents topics written by expert researchers in their areas. Key features include: * state-of-the-art exposition of modern model validity methods, graphical techniques, and computer-intensive methods * systematic presentation with sufficient history and coverage of the fundamentals of the subject * exposure to recent research and a variety of open problems * many interesting real-life examples for practitioners * extensive bibliography, with special emphasis on recent literature * subject index This comprehensive reference work will serve the statistical and applied mathematics communities as well as practitioners in the field. 

This book is based on the papers presented at the International Conference 'Quality Improvement through Statistical Methods' in Cochin, India during December 28-31, 1996. The Conference was hosted by the Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin, India; and sponsored by the Institute for Improvement in Quality and Productivity (IIQP) at the University of Waterloo, Canada, the Statistics in Industry Committee of the International Statistical Institute (lSI) and by the Indian Statistical Institute. There has been an increased interest in Quality Improvement (QI) activities in many organizations during the last several years since the airing of the NBC television program, "e;If Japan can ... why can't we?"e; Implementation of QI meth- ods requires statistical thinking and the utilization of statistical tools, thus there has been a renewed interest in statistical methods applicable to industry and technology. This revitalized enthusiasm has created worldwide discussions on Industrial Statistics Research and QI ideas at several international conferences in recent years. The purpose of this conference was to provide a forum for presenting and ex- changing ideas in Statistical Methods and for enhancing the transference of such technologies to quality improvement efforts in various sectors. It also provided an opportunity for interaction between industrial practitioners and academia. It was intended that the exchange of experiences and ideas would foster new international collaborations in research and other technology transfers.

In the modern theory of boundary value problems the following ap- proach to investigation is agreed upon (we call it the functional approach): some functional spaces are chosen; the statements of boundary value prob- the basis of these spaces; and the solvability of lems are formulated on the problems, properties of solutions, and their dependence on the original data of the problems are analyzed. These stages are put on the basis of the correct statement of different problems of mathematical physics (or of the definition of ill-posed problems). For example, if the solvability of a prob- lem in the functional spaces chosen cannot be established then, probably, the reason is in their unsatisfactory choice. Then the analysis should be repeated employing other functional spaces. Elliptical problems can serve as an example of classical problems which are analyzed by this approach. Their investigations brought a number of new notions and results in the theory of Sobolev spaces W;(D) which, in turn, enabled us to create a sufficiently complete theory of solvability of elliptical equations. Nowadays the mathematical theory of radiative transfer problems and kinetic equations is an extensive area of modern mathematical physics. It has various applications in astrophysics, the theory of nuclear reactors, geophysics, the theory of chemical processes, semiconductor theory, fluid mechanics, etc. [25,29,31,39,40, 47, 52, 78, 83, 94, 98, 120, 124, 125, 135, 146].

Pseudodifferential methods are central to the study of partial differential equations, because they permit an "e;algebraization."e; A replacement of compositions of operators in n-space by simpler product rules for thier symbols. The main purpose of this book is to set up an operational calculus for operators defined from differential and pseudodifferential boundary values problems via a resolvent construction. A secondary purposed is to give a complete treatment of the properties of the calculus of pseudodifferential boundary problems with transmission, both the first version by Boutet de Monvel (brought completely up to date in this edition) and in version containing a parameter running in an unbounded set. And finally, the book presents some applications to evolution problems, index theory, fractional powers, spectral theory and singular perturbation theory.In this second edition the author has extended the scope and applicability of the calculus wit original contributions and perspectives developed in the years since the first edition. A main improvement is the inclusion of globally estimated symbols, allowing a treatment of operators on noncompact manifolds. Many proofs have been replaced by new and simpler arguments, giving better results and clearer insights. The applications to specific problems have been adapted to use these improved and more concrete techniques. Interest continues to increase among geometers and operator theory specialists in the Boutet de Movel calculus and its various generalizations. Thus the book's improved proofs and modern points of view will be useful to research mathematicians and to graduate students studying partial differential equations and pseudodifferential operators.

Astronomers do not do experiments. They observe the universe primarily through detect- ing light emitted by stars and other luminous objects. Since this light must travel through space to reach us, variations in the metric of space affects the appearance of astronomical objects. These variations lead to dramatic changes in the shape and brightness of astronom- ical sources. Because these variations are sensitive to mass rather than to light, observations of gravitational lensing enable astronomers to probe the mass distribution of the universe. With gravitational lensing observations, astronomers are addressing many of the most important scientific questions in astronomy and physics: * What is the universe made of? Most of the energy and mass in the universe is not in the form of luminous objects. Stars account for less than 1 % of the energy density of the universe. Perhaps, as much as another 3% of the energy density of the universe is in the form of warm gas that fills the space between galaxies. The remaining 96% of the energy density is in some yet unidentified form. Roughly one third of this energy density of the universe is "e;dark matter,"e; matter that clusters gravitationally but does not emit light. Most cosmologists suspect that this dark matter is composed of weakly interacting subatomic particles. However, most of the energy density of the universe appears to be in an even stranger form: energy associated with empty space.

This volume presents a complete and self-contained description of new results in the theory of manifolds of nonpositive curvature. It is based on lectures delivered by M. Gromov at the College de France in Paris. Therefore this book may also serve as an introduction to the subject of nonpositively curved manifolds. The latest progress in this area is reflected in the article of W. Ballmann describing the structure of manifolds of higher rank.

This book is based on a course given at the University of Chicago in 1980-81. As with the course, the main motivation of this work is to present an accessible treatment, assuming minimal background, of the profound work of G. A. Margulis concerning rigidity, arithmeticity, and structure of lattices in semi­ simple groups, and related work of the author on the actions of semisimple groups and their lattice subgroups. In doing so, we develop the necessary prerequisites from earlier work of Borel, Furstenberg, Kazhdan, Moore, and others. One of the difficulties involved in an exposition of this material is the continuous interplay between ideas from the theory of algebraic groups on the one hand and ergodic theory on the other. This, of course, is not so much a mathematical difficulty as a cultural one, as the number of persons comfortable in both areas has not traditionally been large. We hope this work will also serve as a contribution towards improving that situation. While there are anumber of satisfactory introductory expositions of the ergodic theory of integer or real line actions, there is no such exposition of the type of ergodic theoretic results with which we shall be dealing (concerning actions of more general groups), and hence we have assumed absolutely no knowledge of ergodic theory (not even the definition of "ergodic") on the part of the reader. All results are developed in full detail.

Let {Xti t ~ O} be a Markov process in Rl, and break up the path X t into (random) component pieces consisting of the zero set ({ tlX = O}) and t the "e;excursions away from 0,"e; that is pieces of path X. : T ::5 s ::5 t, with Xr- = X = 0, but X. 1= 0 for T < s < t. When one measures the time in t the zero set appropriately (in terms of the local time) the excursions acquire a measure theoretic structure practically identical to that of processes with stationary independent increments, except the values of the process are paths rather than real numbers. And there is a measure on path space that helps describe the measure theoretic properties of the excursions in the same way that the Levy measure describes the jumps of a process with independent increments. The entire circle of ideas is called excursion theory. There are many attractive things about the subject: it is an area where one can use to advantage general probabilistic potential theory to make quite specific calculations, it provides a natural setting for apply- ing esoteric things like David Williams' path decomposition, it provides a method for constructing processes whose description in terms of an in- finitesimal generator or some such analytic object would be complicated. And the ideas seem to be closely related to a good deal of current research in probability.

Ergodic theory of dynamical systems i.e., the qualitative analysis of iterations of a single transformation is nowadays a well developed theory. In 1945 S. Ulam and J. von Neumann in their short note [44] suggested to study ergodic theorems for the more general situation when one applies in turn different transforma- tions chosen at random. Their program was fulfilled by S. Kakutani [23] in 1951. 'Both papers considered the case of transformations with a common invariant measure. Recently Ohno [38] noticed that this condition was excessive. Ergodic theorems are just the beginning of ergodic theory. Among further major developments are the notions of entropy and characteristic exponents. The purpose of this book is the study of the variety of ergodic theoretical properties of evolution processes generated by independent applications of transformations chosen at random from a certain class according to some probability distribution. The book exhibits the first systematic treatment of ergodic theory of random transformations i.e., an analysis of composed actions of independent random maps. This set up allows a unified approach to many problems of dynamical systems, products of random matrices and stochastic flows generated by stochastic differential equations.

This volume consists of about half of the papers presented during a three-day seminar on stochastic processes. The seminar was the third of such yearly seminars aimed at bringing together a small group of researchers to discuss their current work in an informal atmosphere. The previous two seminars were held at Northwesterr. University, Evanston. This one was held at the University of Florida, Gainesville. The invited participants in the seminar were B. ATKINSON, K.L. CHUNG, C. DELLACHERIE, J.L. DOOB, E.B. DYNKIN, N. FALKNER, R.K. GETOOR, J. GLOVER, T. JEULIN, H. KASPI, T. McCONNELL, J. MITRO, E. PERKINS, Z. POP-STOJANOVIC, M. RAO, L.C.G. ROGERS, P. SALMINEN, M.J. SHARPE, S.R.S. VARADHAN, and J. WALSH. We thank them and the other participants for the lively atmosphere they have created. The seminar was made possible through the generous supports of the University of Florida, Department of Mathematics, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Grant No. 82-0189, to Northwestern University. We are grateful for their support. Finally, we thank Professors Zoran POP-STOJANOVIC and Murali RAO for their time, effort, and kind hospitality in the organization of the seminar and during our stay in Gainesville.