Considers indecomposable degree $n$ covers of Riemann surfaces with monodromy group an alternating or symmetric group of degree $d$. The authors show that if the cover has five or more branch points then the genus grows rapidly with $n$ unless either $d = n$ or the curves have genus zero, there are precisely five branch points and $n =d(d-1)/2$.

Considers indecomposable degree $n$ covers of Riemann surfaces with monodromy group an alternating or symmetric group of degree $d$. The authors show that if the cover has five or more branch points then the genus grows rapidly with $n$ unless either $d = n$ or the curves have genus zero, there are precisely five branch points and $n =d(d-1)/2$.

Up until recently, Riemannian geometry and basic topology were not included, even by departments or faculties of mathematics, as compulsory subjects in a university-level mathematical education. The standard courses in the classical differential geometry of curves and surfaces which were given instead (and still are given in some places) have come gradually to be viewed as anachronisms. However, there has been hitherto no unanimous agreement as to exactly how such courses should be brought up to date, that is to say, which parts of modern geometry should be regarded as absolutely essential to a modern mathematical education, and what might be the appropriate level of abstractness of their exposition. The task of designing a modernized course in geometry was begun in 1971 in the mechanics division of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University. The subject-matter and level of abstractness of its exposition were dictated by the view that, in addition to the geometry of curves and surfaces, the following topics are certainly useful in the various areas of application of mathematics (especially in elasticity and relativity, to name but two), and are therefore essential: the theory of tensors (including covariant differentiation of them); Riemannian curvature; geodesics and the calculus of variations (including the conservation laws and Hamiltonian formalism); the particular case of skew-symmetric tensors (i. e.

This expository article details the theory of rank one Higgs bundles over a closed Riemann surface $X$ and their relation to representations of the fundamental group of $X$. The authors construct an equivalence between the deformation theories of flat connections and Higgs pairs. This provides an identification of moduli spaces arising in different contexts. The moduli spaces are real Lie groups. From each context arises a complex structure, and the different complex structures define a hyperkähler structure. The twistor space, real forms, and various group actions are computed explicitly in terms of the Jacobian of $X$. The authors describe the moduli spaces and their geometry in terms of the Riemann period matrix of $X$.

The aim of this work is to lay the foundations of differential geometry and Lie theory over the general class of topological base fields and -rings for which a differential calculus has been developed, without any restriction on the dimension or on the characteristic. Two basic features distinguish the author's approach from the classical real (finite or infinite dimensional) theory, namely the interpretation of tangent- and jet functors as functors of scalar extensions and the introduction of multilinear bundles and multilinear connections which generalize the concept of vector bundles and linear connections.

This paper studies quantum invariant differential operators for quantum symmetric spaces in the maximally split case. The main results are quantum versions of theorems of Harish-Chandra and Helgason: There is a Harish-Chandra map which induces an isomorphism between the ring of quantum invariant differential operators and the ring of invariants of a certain Laurent polynomial ring under an action of the restricted Weyl group. Moreover, the image of the center under this map is the entire invariant ring if and only if the underlying irreducible symmetric pair is not of four exceptional types. In the process, the author finds a particularly nice basis for the quantum invariant differential operators that provides a new interpretation of difference operators associated to Macdonald polynomials.

In this paper the authors apply their results on the geometry of polygons in infinitesimal symmetric spaces and symmetric spaces and buildings to four problems in algebraic group theory. Two of these problems are generalizations of the problems of finding the constraints on the eigenvalues (resp. singular values) of a sum (resp. product) when the eigenvalues (singular values) of each summand (factor) are fixed. The other two problems are related to the nonvanishing of the structure constants of the (spherical) Hecke and representation rings associated with a split reductive algebraic group over $\mathbb{Q}$ and its complex Langlands' dual. The authors give a new proof of the Saturation Conjecture for $GL(\ell)$ as a consequence of their solution of the corresponding saturation problem for the Hecke structure constants for all split reductive algebraic groups over $\mathbb{Q}$.

This volume contains the proceedings of three AMS Special Sessions on Computational Algebraic and Analytic Geometry for Low-Dimensional Varieties held January 8, 2007, in New Orleans, LA; January 6, 2009, in Washington, DC; and January 6, 2011, in New Orleans, LA. Algebraic, analytic, and geometric methods are used to study algebraic curves and Riemann surfaces from a variety of points of view. The object of the study is the same. The methods are different. The fact that a multitude of methods, stemming from very different mathematical cultures, can be used to study the same objects makes this area both fascinating and challenging.