This book addresses the interplay between several rapidly expanding areas of mathematics. Suitable for graduate students as well as researchers, it provides surveys of topics linking geometry, spectral theory and stochastics.

The book covers the latest research in the areas of mathematics that deal the properties of partial differential equations and stochastic processes on spaces in connection with the geometry of the underlying space. Written by experts in the field, this book is a valuable tool for the advanced mathematician.

This book demonstrates the influence of geometry on the qualitative behaviour of solutions of quasilinear PDEs on Riemannian manifolds. Motivated by examples arising, among others, from the theory of submanifolds, the authors study classes of coercive elliptic differential inequalities on domains of a manifold M with very general nonlinearities depending on the variable x, on the solution u and on its gradient. The book highlights the mean curvature operator and its variants, and investigates the validity of strong maximum principles, compact support principles and Liouville type theorems. In particular, it identifies sharp thresholds involving curvatures or volume growth of geodesic balls in M to guarantee the above properties under appropriate Keller-Osserman type conditions, which are investigated in detail throughout the book, and discusses the geometric reasons behind the existence of such thresholds. Further, the book also provides a unified review of recent results in the literature, and creates a bridge with geometry by studying the validity of weak and strong maximum principles at infinity, in the spirit of Omori-Yau’s Hessian and Laplacian principles and subsequent improvements.

The Taniguchi Symposium on global analysis on manifolds focused mainly on the relationships between some geometric structures of manifolds and analysis, especially spectral analysis on noncompact manifolds. Included in the present volume are expanded versions of most of the invited lectures. In these original research articles, the reader will find up-to date accounts of the subject.

"This volume contains the expanded lecture notes of courses taught at the Emile Borel Centre of the Henri Poincaré Institute (Paris). In the book, leading experts introduce recent research in their fields. The unifying theme is the study of heat kernels in various situations using related geometric and analytic tools. Topics include analysis of complex-coefficient elliptic operators, diffusions on fractals and on infinite-dimensional groups, heat kernel and isoperimetry on Riemannian manifolds, heat kernels and infinite dimensional analysis, diffusions and Sobolev-type spaces on metric spaces, quasi-regular mappings and p -Laplace operators, heat kernel and spherical inversion on SL 2 (C) , random walks and spectral geometry on crystal lattices, isoperimetric and isocapacitary inequalities, and generating function techniques for random walks on graphs."--Publisher's website.

The goal of this book is to introduce the reader to some of the most frequently used techniques in modern global geometry. Suited to the beginning graduate student willing to specialize in this very challenging field, the necessary prerequisite is a good knowledge of several variables calculus, linear algebra and point-set topology.The book's guiding philosophy is, in the words of Newton, that ?in learning the sciences examples are of more use than precepts?. We support all the new concepts by examples and, whenever possible, we tried to present several facets of the same issue.While we present most of the local aspects of classical differential geometry, the book has a ?global and analytical bias?. We develop many algebraic-topological techniques in the special context of smooth manifolds such as Poincar‚ duality, Thom isomorphism, intersection theory, characteristic classes and the Gauss-;Bonnet theorem.We devoted quite a substantial part of the book to describing the analytic techniques which have played an increasingly important role during the past decades. Thus, the last part of the book discusses elliptic equations, including elliptic Lpand H”lder estimates, Fredholm theory, spectral theory, Hodge theory, and applications of these. The last chapter is an in-depth investigation of a very special, but fundamental class of elliptic operators, namely, the Dirac type operators.The second edition has many new examples and exercises, and an entirely new chapter on classical integral geometry where we describe some mathematical gems which, undeservedly, seem to have disappeared from the contemporary mathematical limelight.

A brand new appendix by Oscar Garcia-Prada graces this third edition of a classic work. In developing the tools necessary for the study of complex manifolds, this comprehensive, well-organized treatment presents in its opening chapters a detailed survey of recent progress in four areas: geometry (manifolds with vector bundles), algebraic topology, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. Wells’s superb analysis also gives details of the Hodge-Riemann bilinear relations on Kahler manifolds, Griffiths's period mapping, quadratic transformations, and Kodaira's vanishing and embedding theorems. Oscar Garcia-Prada’s appendix gives an overview of the developments in the field during the decades since the book appeared.

A famous Swiss professor gave a student’s course in Basel on Riemann surfaces. After a couple of lectures, a student asked him, “Professor, you have as yet not given an exact de nition of a Riemann surface.” The professor answered, “With Riemann surfaces, the main thing is to UNDERSTAND them, not to de ne them.” The student’s objection was reasonable. From a formal viewpoint, it is of course necessary to start as soon as possible with strict de nitions, but the professor’s - swer also has a substantial background. The pure de nition of a Riemann surface— as a complex 1-dimensional complex analytic manifold—contributes little to a true understanding. It takes a long time to really be familiar with what a Riemann s- face is. This example is typical for the objects of global analysis—manifolds with str- tures. There are complex concrete de nitions but these do not automatically explain what they really are, what we can do with them, which operations they really admit, how rigid they are. Hence, there arises the natural question—how to attain a deeper understanding? One well-known way to gain an understanding is through underpinning the d- nitions, theorems and constructions with hierarchies of examples, counterexamples and exercises. Their choice, construction and logical order is for any teacher in global analysis an interesting, important and fun creating task.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to modern global variational theory on fibred spaces. It is based on differentiation and integration theory of differential forms on smooth manifolds, and on the concepts of global analysis and geometry such as jet prolongations of manifolds, mappings, and Lie groups. The book will be invaluable for researchers and PhD students in differential geometry, global analysis, differential equations on manifolds, and mathematical physics, and for the readers who wish to undertake further rigorous study in this broad interdisciplinary field. Featured topics - Analysis on manifolds - Differential forms on jet spaces - Global variational functionals - Euler-Lagrange mapping - Helmholtz form and the inverse problem - Symmetries and the Noether’s theory of conservation laws - Regularity and the Hamilton theory - Variational sequences - Differential invariants and natural variational principles - First book on the geometric foundations of Lagrange structures - New ideas on global variational functionals - Complete proofs of all theorems - Exact treatment of variational principles in field theory, inc. general relativity - Basic structures and tools: global analysis, smooth manifolds, fibred spaces