An authoritative, full-year course on both group theory and ordinary character theory--essential tools for mathematics and the physical sciences One of the few treatments available combining both group theory and character theory, Groups and Characters is an effective general textbook on these two fundamentally connected subjects. Presuming only a basic knowledge of abstract algebra as in a first-year graduate course, the text opens with a review of background material and then guides readers carefully through several of the most important aspects of groups and characters, concentrating mainly on finite groups. Challenging yet accessible, Groups and Characters features: * An extensive collection of examples surveying many different types of groups, including Sylow subgroups of symmetric groups, affine groups of fields, the Mathieu groups, and symplectic groups * A thorough, easy-to-follow discussion of Polya-Redfield enumeration, with applications to combinatorics * Inclusive explorations of the transfer function and normal complements, induction and restriction of characters, Clifford theory, characters of symmetric and alternating groups, Frobenius groups, and the Schur index * Illuminating accounts of several computational aspects of group theory, such as the Schreier-Sims algorithm, Todd-Coxeter coset enumeration, and algorithms for generating character tables As valuable as Groups and Characters will prove as a textbook for mathematicians, it has broader applications. With chapters suitable for use as independent review units, along with a full bibliography and index, it will be a dependable general reference for chemists, physicists, and crystallographers.

This book is the result of many years of research in Non-Euclidean Geometries and Geometry of Lie groups, as well as teaching at Moscow State University (1947- 1949), Azerbaijan State University (Baku) (1950-1955), Kolomna Pedagogical Col lege (1955-1970), Moscow Pedagogical University (1971-1990), and Pennsylvania State University (1990-1995). My first books on Non-Euclidean Geometries and Geometry of Lie groups were written in Russian and published in Moscow: Non-Euclidean Geometries (1955) [Ro1] , Multidimensional Spaces (1966) [Ro2] , and Non-Euclidean Spaces (1969) [Ro3]. In [Ro1] I considered non-Euclidean geometries in the broad sense, as geometry of simple Lie groups, since classical non-Euclidean geometries, hyperbolic and elliptic, are geometries of simple Lie groups of classes Bn and D , and geometries of complex n and quaternionic Hermitian elliptic and hyperbolic spaces are geometries of simple Lie groups of classes An and en. [Ro1] contains an exposition of the geometry of classical real non-Euclidean spaces and their interpretations as hyperspheres with identified antipodal points in Euclidean or pseudo-Euclidean spaces, and in projective and conformal spaces. Numerous interpretations of various spaces different from our usual space allow us, like stereoscopic vision, to see many traits of these spaces absent in the usual space.

A canonical quantization approach to classical field theory, this text is suitable for mathematicians interested in theoretical physics as well as to theoretical physicists who use differential geometric methods in their modelling. Introduces differential geometry, the theory of Lie groups, and progresses to discuss the systematic development of a covariant Hamiltonian formulation of field theory. 1988 edition.

This monograph provides a survey of classical groups over finite fields. Many important results, appearing for the first time in book-form, are clearly presented. Most of them have been obtained by the author and students under his supervision.

The Geometry and Topology of Coxeter Groups is a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of Coxeter groups from the viewpoint of geometric group theory. Groups generated by reflections are ubiquitous in mathematics, and there are classical examples of reflection groups in spherical, Euclidean, and hyperbolic geometry. Any Coxeter group can be realized as a group generated by reflection on a certain contractible cell complex, and this complex is the principal subject of this book. The book explains a theorem of Moussong that demonstrates that a polyhedral metric on this cell complex is nonpositively curved, meaning that Coxeter groups are "CAT(0) groups." The book describes the reflection group trick, one of the most potent sources of examples of aspherical manifolds. And the book discusses many important topics in geometric group theory and topology, including Hopf's theory of ends; contractible manifolds and homology spheres; the Poincaré Conjecture; and Gromov's theory of CAT(0) spaces and groups. Finally, the book examines connections between Coxeter groups and some of topology's most famous open problems concerning aspherical manifolds, such as the Euler Characteristic Conjecture and the Borel and Singer conjectures.

Inspired by classical geometry, geometric group theory has in turn provided a variety of applications to geometry, topology, group theory, number theory and graph theory. This carefully written textbook provides a rigorous introduction to this rapidly evolving field whose methods have proven to be powerful tools in neighbouring fields such as geometric topology. Geometric group theory is the study of finitely generated groups via the geometry of their associated Cayley graphs. It turns out that the essence of the geometry of such groups is captured in the key notion of quasi-isometry, a large-scale version of isometry whose invariants include growth types, curvature conditions, boundary constructions, and amenability. This book covers the foundations of quasi-geometry of groups at an advanced undergraduate level. The subject is illustrated by many elementary examples, outlooks on applications, as well as an extensive collection of exercises.

The group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms Ham(M, 0) of a symplectic mani fold (M, 0) plays a fundamental role both in geometry and classical mechanics. For a geometer, at least under some assumptions on the manifold M, this is just the connected component of the identity in the group of all symplectic diffeomorphisms. From the viewpoint of mechanics, Ham(M,O) is the group of all admissible motions. What is the minimal amount of energy required in order to generate a given Hamiltonian diffeomorphism I? An attempt to formalize and answer this natural question has led H. Hofer [HI] (1990) to a remarkable discovery. It turns out that the solution of this variational problem can be interpreted as a geometric quantity, namely as the distance between I and the identity transformation. Moreover this distance is associated to a canonical biinvariant metric on Ham(M, 0). Since Hofer's work this new ge ometry has been intensively studied in the framework of modern symplectic topology. In the present book I will describe some of these developments. Hofer's geometry enables us to study various notions and problems which come from the familiar finite dimensional geometry in the context of the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms. They turn out to be very different from the usual circle of problems considered in symplectic topology and thus extend significantly our vision of the symplectic world.

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.

More than half a century has passed since Weyl's 'The Classical Groups' gave a unified picture of invariant theory. This book presents an updated version of this theory together with many of the important recent developments. As a text for those new to the area, this book provides an introduction to the structure and finite-dimensional representation theory of the complex classical groups that requires only an abstract algebra course as a prerequisite. The more advanced reader will find an introduction to the structure and representations of complex reductive algebraic groups and their compact real forms. This book will also serve as a reference for the main results on tensor and polynomial invariants and the finite-dimensional representation theory of the classical groups. It will appeal to researchers in mathematics, statistics, physics and chemistry whose work involves symmetry groups, representation theory, invariant theory and algebraic group theory.