The study of 3-dimensional spaces brings together elements from several areas of mathematics. The most notable are topology and geometry, but elements of number theory and analysis also make appearances. In the past 30 years, there have been striking developments in the mathematics of 3-dimensional manifolds. This book aims to introduce undergraduate students to some of these important developments. Low-Dimensional Geometry starts at a relatively elementary level, and its early chapters can be used as a brief introduction to hyperbolic geometry. However, the ultimate goal is to describe the very recently completed geometrization program for 3-dimensional manifolds. The journey to reach this goal emphasizes examples and concrete constructions as an introduction to more general statements. This includes the tessellations associated to the process of gluing together the sides of a polygon. Bending some of these tessellations provides a natural introduction to 3-dimensional hyperbolic geometry and to the theory of kleinian groups, and it eventually leads to a discussion of the geometrization theorems for knot complements and 3-dimensional manifolds. This book is illustrated with many pictures, as the author intended to share his own enthusiasm for the beauty of some of the mathematical objects involved. However, it also emphasizes mathematical rigor and, with the exception of the most recent research breakthroughs, its constructions and statements are carefully justified.

Low-dimensional topology has long been a fertile area for the interaction of many different disciplines of mathematics, including differential geometry, hyperbolic geometry, combinatorics, representation theory, global analysis, classical mechanics, and theoretical physics. The Park City Mathematics Institute summer school in 2006 explored in depth the most exciting recent aspects of this interaction, aimed at a broad audience of both graduate students and researchers. The present volume is based on lectures presented at the summer school on low-dimensional topology. These notes give fresh, concise, and high-level introductions to these developments, often with new arguments not found elsewhere. The volume will be of use both to graduate students seeking to enter the field of low-dimensional topology and to senior researchers wishing to keep up with current developments. The volume begins with notes based on a special lecture by John Milnor about the history of the topology of manifolds. It also contains notes from lectures by Cameron Gordon on the basics of three-manifold topology and surgery problems, Mikhail Khovanov on his homological invariants for knots, John Etnyre on contact geometry, Ron Fintushel and Ron Stern on constructions of exotic four-manifolds, David Gabai on the hyperbolic geometry and the ending lamination theorem, Zoltan Szabo on Heegaard Floer homology for knots and three manifolds, and John Morgan on Hamilton's and Perelman's work on Ricci flow and geometrization.

This monograph provides an accessible introduction to the applications of pseudoholomorphic curves in symplectic and contact geometry, with emphasis on dimensions four and three. The first half of the book focuses on McDuff's characterization of symplectic rational and ruled surfaces, one of the classic early applications of holomorphic curve theory. The proof presented here uses the language of Lefschetz fibrations and pencils, thus it includes some background on these topics, in addition to a survey of the required analytical results on holomorphic curves. Emphasizing applications rather than technical results, the analytical survey mostly refers to other sources for proofs, while aiming to provide precise statements that are widely applicable, plus some informal discussion of the analytical ideas behind them. The second half of the book then extends this program in two complementary directions: (1) a gentle introduction to Gromov-Witten theory and complete proof of the classification of uniruled symplectic 4-manifolds; and (2) a survey of punctured holomorphic curves and their applications to questions from 3-dimensional contact topology, such as classifying the symplectic fillings of planar contact manifolds. This book will be particularly useful to graduate students and researchers who have basic literacy in symplectic geometry and algebraic topology, and would like to learn how to apply standard techniques from holomorphic curve theory without dwelling more than necessary on the analytical details. This book is also part of the Virtual Series on Symplectic Geometry http://www.springer.com/series/16019

Every mathematician should be acquainted with the basic facts about the geometry of surfaces, of two-dimensional manifolds. The theory of three-dimensional manifolds is much more difficult and still only partly understood, although there is ample evidence that the theory of three-dimensional manifolds is one of the most beautiful in the whole of mathematics. This excellent introductory work makes this mathematical wonderland remained rather inaccessible to non-specialists. The author is both a leading researcher, with a formidable geometric intuition, and a gifted expositor. His vivid descriptions of what it might be like to live in this or that three-dimensional manifold bring the subject to life. Like Poincaré, he appeals to intuition, but his enthusiasm is infectious and should make many converts for this kind of mathematics. There are good pictures, plenty of exercises and problems, and the reader will find a selection of topics which are not found in the standard repertoire. This book contains a great deal of interesting mathematics.

Connecting theory with practice, this systematic and rigorous introduction covers the fundamental principles, algorithms and applications of key mathematical models for high-dimensional data analysis. Comprehensive in its approach, it provides unified coverage of many different low-dimensional models and analytical techniques, including sparse and low-rank models, and both convex and non-convex formulations. Readers will learn how to develop efficient and scalable algorithms for solving real-world problems, supported by numerous examples and exercises throughout, and how to use the computational tools learnt in several application contexts. Applications presented include scientific imaging, communication, face recognition, 3D vision, and deep networks for classification. With code available online, this is an ideal textbook for senior and graduate students in computer science, data science, and electrical engineering, as well as for those taking courses on sparsity, low-dimensional structures, and high-dimensional data. Foreword by Emmanuel Candès.

Presents the papers of Beltrami, Klein, and Poincare that brought hyperbolic geometry into the mainstream of mathematics.

This book consists of a selection of articles devoted to new ideas and developments in low dimensional topology. Low dimensions refer to dimensions three and four for the topology of manifolds and their submanifolds. Thus we have papers related to both manifolds and to knotted submanifolds of dimension one in three (classical knot theory) and two in four (surfaces in four dimensional spaces). Some of the work involves virtual knot theory where the knots are abstractions of classical knots but can be represented by knots embedded in surfaces. This leads both to new interactions with classical topology and to new interactions with essential combinatorics.

This book is an exposition of the theoretical foundations of hyperbolic manifolds. It is intended to be used both as a textbook and as a reference. Particular emphasis has been placed on readability and completeness of ar gument. The treatment of the material is for the most part elementary and self-contained. The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of algebra and topology at the first-year graduate level of an American university. The book is divided into three parts. The first part, consisting of Chap ters 1-7, is concerned with hyperbolic geometry and basic properties of discrete groups of isometries of hyperbolic space. The main results are the existence theorem for discrete reflection groups, the Bieberbach theorems, and Selberg's lemma. The second part, consisting of Chapters 8-12, is de voted to the theory of hyperbolic manifolds. The main results are Mostow's rigidity theorem and the determination of the structure of geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds. The third part, consisting of Chapter 13, in tegrates the first two parts in a development of the theory of hyperbolic orbifolds. The main results are the construction of the universal orbifold covering space and Poincare's fundamental polyhedron theorem.

This proceedings volume presents a diverse collection of high-quality, state-of-the-art research and survey articles written by top experts in low-dimensional topology and its applications. The focal topics include the wide range of historical and contemporary invariants of knots and links and related topics such as three- and four-dimensional manifolds, braids, virtual knot theory, quantum invariants, braids, skein modules and knot algebras, link homology, quandles and their homology; hyperbolic knots and geometric structures of three-dimensional manifolds; the mechanism of topological surgery in physical processes, knots in Nature in the sense of physical knots with applications to polymers, DNA enzyme mechanisms, and protein structure and function. The contents is based on contributions presented at the International Conference on Knots, Low-Dimensional Topology and Applications – Knots in Hellas 2016, which was held at the International Olympic Academy in Greece in July 2016. The goal of the international conference was to promote the exchange of methods and ideas across disciplines and generations, from graduate students to senior researchers, and to explore fundamental research problems in the broad fields of knot theory and low-dimensional topology. This book will benefit all researchers who wish to take their research in new directions, to learn about new tools and methods, and to discover relevant and recent literature for future study.

Our first knowledge of differential geometry usually comes from the study of the curves and surfaces in I\!\!R^3 that arise in calculus. Here we learn about line and surface integrals, divergence and curl, and the various forms of Stokes' Theorem. If we are fortunate, we may encounter curvature and such things as the Serret-Frenet formulas. With just the basic tools from multivariable calculus, plus a little knowledge of linear algebra, it is possible to begin a much richer and rewarding study of differential geometry, which is what is presented in this book. It starts with an introduction to the classical differential geometry of curves and surfaces in Euclidean space, then leads to an introduction to the Riemannian geometry of more general manifolds, including a look at Einstein spaces. An important bridge from the low-dimensional theory to the general case is provided by a chapter on the intrinsic geometry of surfaces. The first half of the book, covering the geometry of curves and surfaces, would be suitable for a one-semester undergraduate course. The local and global theories of curves and surfaces are presented, including detailed discussions of surfaces of rotation, ruled surfaces, and minimal surfaces. The second half of the book, which could be used for a more advanced course, begins with an introduction to differentiable manifolds, Riemannian structures, and the curvature tensor. Two special topics are treated in detail: spaces of constant curvature and Einstein spaces. The main goal of the book is to get started in a fairly elementary way, then to guide the reader toward more sophisticated concepts and more advanced topics. There are many examples and exercises to help along the way. Numerous figures help the reader visualize key concepts and examples, especially in lower dimensions. For the second edition, a number of errors were corrected and some text and a number of figures have been added.