With applications in mind, this self-contained monograph provides a coherent and thorough treatment of the configuration spaces of Euclidean spaces and spheres, making the subject accessible to researchers and graduates with a minimal background in classical homotopy theory and algebraic topology.

This book collects the scientific contributions of a group of leading experts who took part in the INdAM Meeting held in Cortona in September 2014. With combinatorial techniques as the central theme, it focuses on recent developments in configuration spaces from various perspectives. It also discusses their applications in areas ranging from representation theory, toric geometry and geometric group theory to applied algebraic topology.

This book describes a promising approach to problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics, including the measurement problem. The dynamics of ensembles on configuration space is shown here to be a valuable tool for unifying the formalisms of classical and quantum mechanics, for deriving and extending the latter in various ways, and for addressing the quantum measurement problem. A description of physical systems by means of ensembles on configuration space can be introduced at a very fundamental level: the basic building blocks are a configuration space, probabilities, and Hamiltonian equations of motion for the probabilities. The formalism can describe both classical and quantum systems, and their thermodynamics, with the main difference being the choice of ensemble Hamiltonian. Furthermore, there is a natural way of introducing ensemble Hamiltonians that describe the evolution of hybrid systems; i.e., interacting systems that have distinct classical and quantum sectors, allowing for consistent descriptions of quantum systems interacting with classical measurement devices and quantum matter fields interacting gravitationally with a classical spacetime.

These proceedings contain the contributions of some of the participants in the "intensive research period" held at the De Giorgi Research Center in Pisa, during the period May-June 2010. The central theme of this research period was the study of configuration spaces from various points of view. This topic originated from the intersection of several classical theories: Braid groups and related topics, configurations of vectors (of great importance in Lie theory and representation theory), arrangements of hyperplanes and of subspaces, combinatorics, singularity theory. Recently, however, configuration spaces have acquired independent interest and indeed the contributions in this volume go far beyond the above subjects, making it attractive to a large audience of mathematicians.

A novel algorithmic approach to mechanism design based on a geometric representation of kinematic function called configuration space partitions. This book presents the configuration space method for computer-aided design of mechanisms with changing part contacts. Configuration space is a complete and compact geometric representation of part motions and part interactions that supports the core mechanism design tasks of analysis, synthesis, and tolerancing. It is the first general algorithmic treatment of the kinematics of higher pairs with changing contacts. It will help designers detect and correct design flaws and unexpected kinematic behaviors, as demonstrated in the book's four case studies taken from industry. After presenting the configuration space framework and algorithms for mechanism kinematics, the authors describe algorithms for kinematic analysis, tolerancing, and synthesis based on configuration spaces. The case studies follow, illustrating the application of the configuration space method to the analysis and design of automotive, micro-mechanical, and optical mechanisms. Appendixes offer a catalog of higher-pair mechanisms and a description of HIPAIR, an open source C++ mechanical design system that implements some of the configuration space methods described in the book, including configuration space visualization and kinematic simulation. HIPAIR comes with an interactive graphical user interface and many sample mechanism input files. The Configuration Space Method for Kinematic Design of Mechanisms will be a valuable resource for students, researchers, and engineers in mechanical engineering, computer science, and robotics.

This book gives a brief treatment of the equivariant cohomology of the classical configuration space F(R^d,n) from its beginnings to recent developments. This subject has been studied intensively, starting with the classical papers of Artin (1925/1947) on the theory of braids, and progressing through the work of Fox and Neuwirth (1962), Fadell and Neuwirth (1962), and Arnol'd (1969). The focus of this book is on the mod 2 equivariant cohomology algebras of F(R^d,n), whose additive structure was described by Cohen (1976) and whose algebra structure was studied in an influential paper by Hung (1990). A detailed new proof of Hung's main theorem is given, however it is shown that some of the arguments given by him on the way to his result are incorrect, as are some of the intermediate results in his paper. This invalidates a paper by three of the authors, Blagojević, Lück and Ziegler (2016), who used a claimed intermediate result in order to derive lower bounds for the existence of k-regular and l-skew embeddings. Using the new proof of Hung's main theorem, new lower bounds for the existence of highly regular embeddings are obtained: Some of them agree with the previously claimed bounds, some are weaker. Assuming only a standard graduate background in algebraic topology, this book carefully guides the reader on the way into the subject. It is aimed at graduate students and researchers interested in the development of algebraic topology in its applications in geometry.

The classical story - of the hypergeometric functions, the configuration space of 4 points on the projective line, elliptic curves, elliptic modular functions and the theta functions - now evolves, in this book, to the story of hypergeometric funktions in 4 variables, the configuration space of 6 points in the projective plane, K3 surfaces, theta functions in 4 variables. This modern theory has been established by the author and his collaborators in the 1990's; further development to different aspects is expected. It leads the reader to a fascinating 4-dimensional world. The author tells the story casually and visually in a plain language, starting form elementary level such as equivalence relations, the exponential function, ... Undergraduate students should be able to enjoy the text.

A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.

This volume provides a unified and accessible account of recent developments regarding the real homotopy type of configuration spaces of manifolds. Configuration spaces consist of collections of pairwise distinct points in a given manifold, the study of which is a classical topic in algebraic topology. One of this theory’s most important questions concerns homotopy invariance: if a manifold can be continuously deformed into another one, then can the configuration spaces of the first manifold be continuously deformed into the configuration spaces of the second? This conjecture remains open for simply connected closed manifolds. Here, it is proved in characteristic zero (i.e. restricted to algebrotopological invariants with real coefficients), using ideas from the theory of operads. A generalization to manifolds with boundary is then considered. Based on the work of Campos, Ducoulombier, Lambrechts, Willwacher, and the author, the book covers a vast array of topics, including rational homotopy theory, compactifications, PA forms, propagators, Kontsevich integrals, and graph complexes, and will be of interest to a wide audience.