This book covers topics such as manifolds with positive scalar curvature, pseudo-isotopy spectrum and controlled theory, and reduction of the Novikov and Borel conjectures for aspherical complexes to aspherical manifolds.

Contents: A Foliated Squeezing Theorem for Geometric Modules (A Bartels et al.); Equivariant Cellular Homology and Its Applications (B Chorny); Remarks on a Conjecture of Gromov and Lawson (W Dwyer et al.); Chain Complex Invariants for Group Actions (L E Jones); The Ore Condition, Affiliated Operators, and the Lamplighter Group (P A Linnell et al.); The Surgery Exact Sequence Revisited (E K Pedersen); K-theory for Proper Smooth Actions of Totally Disconnected Groups (J Sauer); Geometric Chain Homotopy Equivalences between Novikov Complexes (D Schütz); and other papers;

An infinite-dimensional manifold is a topological manifold modeled on some infinite-dimensional homogeneous space called a model space. In this book, the following spaces are considered model spaces: Hilbert space (or non-separable Hilbert spaces), the Hilbert cube, dense subspaces of Hilbert spaces being universal spaces for absolute Borel spaces, the direct limit of Euclidean spaces, and the direct limit of Hilbert cubes (which is homeomorphic to the dual of a separable infinite-dimensional Banach space with bounded weak-star topology). This book is designed for graduate students to acquire knowledge of fundamental results on infinite-dimensional manifolds and their characterizations. To read and understand this book, some background is required even for senior graduate students in topology, but that background knowledge is minimized and is listed in the first chapter so that references can easily be found. Almost all necessary background information is found in Geometric Aspects of General Topology, the author's first book. Many kinds of hyperspaces and function spaces are investigated in various branches of mathematics, which are mostly infinite-dimensional. Among them, many examples of infinite-dimensional manifolds have been found. For researchers studying such objects, this book will be very helpful. As outstanding applications of Hilbert cube manifolds, the book contains proofs of the topological invariance of Whitehead torsion and Borsuk’s conjecture on the homotopy type of compact ANRs. This is also the first book that presents combinatorial ∞-manifolds, the infinite-dimensional version of combinatorial n-manifolds, and proofs of two remarkable results, that is, any triangulation of each manifold modeled on the direct limit of Euclidean spaces is a combinatorial ∞-manifold and the Hauptvermutung for them is true.

Contents: A Foliated Squeezing Theorem for Geometric Modules (A Bartels et al.)Equivariant Cellular Homology and Its Applications (B Chorny)Remarks on a Conjecture of Gromov and Lawson (W Dwyer et al.)Chain Complex Invariants for Group Actions (L E Jones)The Ore Condition, Affiliated Operators, and the Lamplighter Group (P A Linnell et al.)The Surgery Exact Sequence Revisited (E K Pedersen)K-theory for Proper Smooth Actions of Totally Disconnected Groups (J Sauer)Geometric Chain Homotopy Equivalences between Novikov Complexes (D Schütz)and other papers Readership: Graduate students and researchers in geometry and topology. Keywords:High-Dimensional Manifold Topology;Operator Algebras;K-Theory;L-Theory;Foliated Control Theory

Generalized manifolds are a most fascinating subject to study. They were introduced in the 1930s, when topologists tried to detect topological manifolds among more general spaces. (This is now called the manifold recognition problem.) As such, generalized manifolds have served to enhance our understanding of the nature of genuine manifolds. However, it soon became more important to study the category of generalized manifolds itself. A breakthrough was made in the 1990s, when several topologists discovered a systematic way of constructing higher-dimensional generalized manifolds, based on advanced surgery techniques. In fact, the development of controlled surgery theory and the study of generalized manifolds developed in parallel. In this process, earlier studies of geometric surgery turned out to be very helpful. Generalized manifolds will continue to be an attractive subject to study, for there remain several unsolved fundamental problems. Moreover, they hold promise for new research, e.g. for finding appropriate structures on these spaces which could bring to light geometric (or even analytic) aspects of higher-dimensional generalized manifolds. This is the first book to systematically collect the most important material on higher-dimensional generalized manifolds and controlled surgery. It is self-contained and its extensive list of references reflects the historic development. The book is based on the authors' graduate courses and seminars, as well as their talks given at various meetings, and is suitable for advanced graduate students and researchers in algebraic and geometric topology.

Bringing together many results previously scattered throughout the research literature into a single framework, this work concentrates on the application of the author's algebraic theory of surgery to provide a unified treatment of the invariants of codimension 2 embeddings, generalizing the Alexander polynomials and Seifert forms of classical knot theory.

This book is an introduction to surgery theory: the standard classification method for high-dimensional manifolds. It is aimed at graduate students, who have already had a basic topology course, and would now like to understand the topology of high-dimensional manifolds. This text contains entry-level accounts of the various prerequisites of both algebra and topology, including basic homotopy and homology, Poincare duality, bundles, co-bordism, embeddings, immersions, Whitehead torsion, Poincare complexes, spherical fibrations and quadratic forms and formations. While concentrating on the basic mechanics of surgery, this book includes many worked examples, useful drawings for illustration of the algebra and references for further reading.