Written by two leading workers in the field, this brief but elegant book presents in full detail the simplest proof of the "main conjecture" for cyclotomic fields. Its motivation stems not only from the inherent beauty of the subject, but also from the wider arithmetic interest of these questions. From the reviews: "The text is written in a clear and attractive style, with enough explanation helping the reader orientate in the midst of technical details." --ZENTRALBLATT MATH

Kummer's work on cyclotomic fields paved the way for the development of algebraic number theory in general by Dedekind, Weber, Hensel, Hilbert, Takagi, Artin and others. However, the success of this general theory has tended to obscure special facts proved by Kummer about cyclotomic fields which lie deeper than the general theory. For a long period in the 20th century this aspect of Kummer's work seems to have been largely forgotten, except for a few papers, among which are those by Pollaczek [Po], Artin-Hasse [A-H] and Vandiver [Va]. In the mid 1950's, the theory of cyclotomic fields was taken up again by Iwasawa and Leopoldt. Iwasawa viewed cyclotomic fields as being analogues for number fields of the constant field extensions of algebraic geometry, and wrote a great sequence of papers investigating towers of cyclotomic fields, and more generally, Galois extensions of number fields whose Galois group is isomorphic to the additive group of p-adic integers. Leopoldt concentrated on a fixed cyclotomic field, and established various p-adic analogues of the classical complex analytic class number formulas. In particular, this led him to introduce, with Kubota, p-adic analogues of the complex L-functions attached to cyclotomic extensions of the rationals. Finally, in the late 1960's, Iwasawa [Iw 1 I] . made the fundamental discovery that there was a close connection between his work on towers of cyclotomic fields and these p-adic L-functions of Leopoldt-Kubota.

This volume contains papers by invited speakers of the symposium "Zeta Functions, Topology and Quantum Physics" held at Kinki U- versity in Osaka, Japan, during the period of March 3-6, 2003. The aims of this symposium were to establish mutual understanding and to exchange ideas among researchers working in various fields which have relation to zeta functions and zeta values. We are very happy to add this volume to the series Developments in Mathematics from Springer. In this respect, Professor Krishnaswami Alladi helped us a lot by showing his keen and enthusiastic interest in publishing this volume and by contributing his paper with Alexander Berkovich. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Kinki University. We would like to thank Professor Megumu Munakata, Vice-Rector of Kinki University, and Professor Nobuki Kawashima, Director of School of Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Engineering, Kinki Univ- sity, for their interest and support. We also thank John Martindale of Springer for his excellent editorial work.

This text on a central area of number theory covers p-adic L-functions, class numbers, cyclotomic units, Fermat’s Last Theorem, and Iwasawa’s theory of Z_p-extensions. This edition contains a new chapter on the work of Thaine, Kolyvagin, and Rubin, including a proof of the Main Conjecture, as well as a chapter on other recent developments, such as primality testing via Jacobi sums and Sinnott’s proof of the vanishing of Iwasawa’s f-invariant.

This book grew. out of lectures given at the University of Maryland in 1979/1980. The purpose was to give a treatment of p-adic L-functions and cyclotomic fields, including Iwasawa's theory of Zp-extensions, which was accessible to mathematicians of varying backgrounds. The reader is assumed to have had at least one semester of algebraic number theory (though one of my students took such a course concurrently). In particular, the following terms should be familiar: Dedekind domain, class number, discriminant, units, ramification, local field. Occasionally one needs the fact that ramification can be computed locally. However, one who has a good background in algebra should be able to survive by talking to the local algebraic number theorist. I have not assumed class field theory; the basic facts are summarized in an appendix. For most of the book, one only needs the fact that the Galois group of the maximal unramified abelian extension is isomorphic to the ideal class group, and variants of this statement. The chapters are intended to be read consecutively, but it should be possible to vary the order considerably. The first four chapters are basic. After that, the reader willing to believe occasional facts could probably read the remaining chapters randomly. For example, the reader might skip directly to Chapter 13 to learn about Zp-extensions. The last chapter, on the Kronecker-Weber theorem, can be read after Chapter 2.

This is the first introductory book on multiple zeta functions and multiple polylogarithms which are the generalizations of the Riemann zeta function and the classical polylogarithms, respectively, to the multiple variable setting. It contains all the basic concepts and the important properties of these functions and their special values. This book is aimed at graduate students, mathematicians and physicists who are interested in this current active area of research.The book will provide a detailed and comprehensive introduction to these objects, their fascinating properties and interesting relations to other mathematical subjects, and various generalizations such as their q-analogs and their finite versions (by taking partial sums modulo suitable prime powers). Historical notes and exercises are provided at the end of each chapter.

Celebrating one of the leading figures in contemporary number theory – John H. Coates – on the occasion of his 70th birthday, this collection of contributions covers a range of topics in number theory, concentrating on the arithmetic of elliptic curves, modular forms, and Galois representations. Several of the contributions in this volume were presented at the conference Elliptic Curves, Modular Forms and Iwasawa Theory, held in honour of the 70th birthday of John Coates in Cambridge, March 25-27, 2015. The main unifying theme is Iwasawa theory, a field that John Coates himself has done much to create. This collection is indispensable reading for researchers in Iwasawa theory, and is interesting and valuable for those in many related fields.