Presents 15 papers treating discrete groups as they occur in areas such as algebra, analysis, geometry, number theory and topology. This work helps graduate students and researchers to understand the structures and applications of discrete subgroups of Lie groups and locally symmetric spaces.

Hyperbolic Manifolds and Discrete Groups is at the crossroads of several branches of mathematics: hyperbolic geometry, discrete groups, 3-dimensional topology, geometric group theory, and complex analysis. The main focus throughout the text is on the "Big Monster," i.e., on Thurston’s hyperbolization theorem, which has not only completely changes the landscape of 3-dimensinal topology and Kleinian group theory but is one of the central results of 3-dimensional topology. The book is fairly self-contained, replete with beautiful illustrations, a rich set of examples of key concepts, numerous exercises, and an extensive bibliography and index. It should serve as an ideal graduate course/seminar text or as a comprehensive reference.

No detailed description available for "Conformal Geometry of Discrete Groups and Manifolds".

Geometry in ancient Greece is said to have originated in the curiosity of mathematicians about the shapes of crystals, with that curiosity culminating in the classification of regular convex polyhedra addressed in the final volume of Euclid’s Elements. Since then, geometry has taken its own path and the study of crystals has not been a central theme in mathematics, with the exception of Kepler’s work on snowflakes. Only in the nineteenth century did mathematics begin to play a role in crystallography as group theory came to be applied to the morphology of crystals. This monograph follows the Greek tradition in seeking beautiful shapes such as regular convex polyhedra. The primary aim is to convey to the reader how algebraic topology is effectively used to explore the rich world of crystal structures. Graph theory, homology theory, and the theory of covering maps are employed to introduce the notion of the topological crystal which retains, in the abstract, all the information on the connectivity of atoms in the crystal. For that reason the title Topological Crystallography has been chosen. Topological crystals can be described as “living in the logical world, not in space,” leading to the question of how to place or realize them “canonically” in space. Proposed here is the notion of standard realizations of topological crystals in space, including as typical examples the crystal structures of diamond and lonsdaleite. A mathematical view of the standard realizations is also provided by relating them to asymptotic behaviors of random walks and harmonic maps. Furthermore, it can be seen that a discrete analogue of algebraic geometry is linked to the standard realizations. Applications of the discussions in this volume include not only a systematic enumeration of crystal structures, an area of considerable scientific interest for many years, but also the architectural design of lightweight rigid structures. The reader therefore can see the agreement of theory and practice.

The theory of bounded cohomology, introduced by Gromov in the late 1980s, has had powerful applications in geometric group theory and the geometry and topology of manifolds, and has been the topic of active research continuing to this day. This monograph provides a unified, self-contained introduction to the theory and its applications, making it accessible to a student who has completed a first course in algebraic topology and manifold theory. The book can be used as a source for research projects for master's students, as a thorough introduction to the field for graduate students, and as a valuable landmark text for researchers, providing both the details of the theory of bounded cohomology and links of the theory to other closely related areas. The first part of the book is devoted to settling the fundamental definitions of the theory, and to proving some of the (by now classical) results on low-dimensional bounded cohomology and on bounded cohomology of topological spaces. The second part describes applications of the theory to the study of the simplicial volume of manifolds, to the classification of circle actions, to the analysis of maximal representations of surface groups, and to the study of flat vector bundles with a particular emphasis on the possible use of bounded cohomology in relation with the Chern conjecture. Each chapter ends with a discussion of further reading that puts the presented results in a broader context.

The geometry and analysis that is discussed in this book extends to classical results for general discrete or Lie groups, and the methods used are analytical, but are not concerned with what is described these days as real analysis. Most of the results described in this book have a dual formulation: they have a "discrete version" related to a finitely generated discrete group and a continuous version related to a Lie group. The authors chose to center this book around Lie groups, but could easily have pushed it in several other directions as it interacts with the theory of second order partial differential operators, and probability theory, as well as with group theory.

Provides a general framework for doing geometric group theory for non-locally-compact topological groups arising in mathematical practice.

This text is intended to serve as an introduction to the geometry of the action of discrete groups of Mobius transformations. The subject matter has now been studied with changing points of emphasis for over a hundred years, the most recent developments being connected with the theory of 3-manifolds: see, for example, the papers of Poincare [77] and Thurston [101]. About 1940, the now well-known (but virtually unobtainable) Fenchel-Nielsen manuscript appeared. Sadly, the manuscript never appeared in print, and this more modest text attempts to display at least some of the beautiful geo metrical ideas to be found in that manuscript, as well as some more recent material. The text has been written with the conviction that geometrical explana tions are essential for a full understanding of the material and that however simple a matrix proof might seem, a geometric proof is almost certainly more profitable. Further, wherever possible, results should be stated in a form that is invariant under conjugation, thus making the intrinsic nature of the result more apparent. Despite the fact that the subject matter is concerned with groups of isometries of hyperbolic geometry, many publications rely on Euclidean estimates and geometry. However, the recent developments have again emphasized the need for hyperbolic geometry, and I have included a comprehensive chapter on analytical (not axiomatic) hyperbolic geometry. It is hoped that this chapter will serve as a "dictionary" offormulae in plane hyperbolic geometry and as such will be of interest and use in its own right.

This book constitutes the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Birmingham to mark the retirement of Professor A. M. Macbeath. The papers represent up-to-date work on a broad spectrum of topics in the theory of discrete group actions, ranging from presentations of finite groups through the detailed study of Fuchsian and crystallographic groups, to applications of group actions in low dimensional topology, complex analysis, algebraic geometry and number theory. For those wishing to pursue research in these areas, this volume offers a valuable summary of contemporary thought and a source of fresh geometric insights.

Geometry is a classical core part of mathematics which, with its birth, marked the beginning of the mathematical sciences. Thus, not surprisingly, geometry has played a key role in many important developments of mathematics in the past, as well as in present times. While focusing on modern mathematics, one has to emphasize the increasing role of discrete mathematics, or equivalently, the broad movement to establish discrete analogues of major components of mathematics. In this way, the works of a number of outstanding mathema- cians including H. S. M. Coxeter (Canada), C. A. Rogers (United Kingdom), and L. Fejes-T oth (Hungary) led to the new and fast developing eld called discrete geometry. One can brie y describe this branch of geometry as the study of discrete arrangements of geometric objects in Euclidean, as well as in non-Euclidean spaces. This, as a classical core part, also includes the theory of polytopes and tilings in addition to the theory of packing and covering. D- crete geometry is driven by problems often featuring a very clear visual and applied character. The solutions use a variety of methods of modern mat- matics, including convex and combinatorial geometry, coding theory, calculus of variations, di erential geometry, group theory, and topology, as well as geometric analysis and number theory.