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The theory of characteristic classes provides a meeting ground for the various disciplines of differential topology, differential and algebraic geometry, cohomology, and fiber bundle theory. As such, it is a fundamental and an essential tool in the study of differentiable manifolds. In this volume, the authors provide a thorough introduction to characteristic classes, with detailed studies of Stiefel-Whitney classes, Chern classes, Pontrjagin classes, and the Euler class. Three appendices cover the basics of cohomology theory and the differential forms approach to characteristic classes, and provide an account of Bernoulli numbers. Based on lecture notes of John Milnor, which first appeared at Princeton University in 1957 and have been widely studied by graduate students of topology ever since, this published version has been completely revised and corrected.
The topics in this survey volume concern research done on the differential geom etry of foliations over the last few years. After a discussion of the basic concepts in the theory of foliations in the first four chapters, the subject is narrowed down to Riemannian foliations on closed manifolds beginning with Chapter 5. Following the discussion of the special case of flows in Chapter 6, Chapters 7 and 8 are de voted to Hodge theory for the transversal Laplacian and applications of the heat equation method to Riemannian foliations. Chapter 9 on Lie foliations is a prepa ration for the statement of Molino's Structure Theorem for Riemannian foliations in Chapter 10. Some aspects of the spectral theory for Riemannian foliations are discussed in Chapter 11. Connes' point of view of foliations as examples of non commutative spaces is briefly described in Chapter 12. Chapter 13 applies ideas of Riemannian foliation theory to an infinite-dimensional context. Aside from the list of references on Riemannian foliations (items on this list are referred to in the text by [ ]), we have included several appendices as follows. Appendix A is a list of books and surveys on particular aspects of foliations. Appendix B is a list of proceedings of conferences and symposia devoted partially or entirely to foliations. Appendix C is a bibliography on foliations, which attempts to be a reasonably complete list of papers and preprints on the subject of foliations up to 1995, and contains approximately 2500 titles.
There is no question that the cohomology of infinite dimensional Lie algebras deserves a brief and separate mono graph. This subject is not cover~d by any of the tradition al branches of mathematics and is characterized by relative ly elementary proofs and varied application. Moreover, the subject matter is widely scattered in various research papers or exists only in verbal form. The theory of infinite-dimensional Lie algebras differs markedly from the theory of finite-dimensional Lie algebras in that the latter possesses powerful classification theo rems, which usually allow one to "recognize" any finite dimensional Lie algebra (over the field of complex or real numbers), i.e., find it in some list. There are classifica tion theorems in the theory of infinite-dimensional Lie al gebras as well, but they are encumbered by strong restric tions of a technical character. These theorems are useful mainly because they yield a considerable supply of interest ing examples. We begin with a list of such examples, and further direct our main efforts to their study.
Contains surveys and research articles regarding different aspects of the theory of foliation.
This volume contains surveys and research articles regarding different aspects of the theory of foliation. The main aspects concern the topology of foliations of low-dimensional manifolds, the geometry of foliated Riemannian manifolds and the dynamical properties of foliations. Among the surveys are lecture notes devoted to the analysis of some operator algebras on foliated manifolds and the theory of confoliations (objects defined recently by W Thurston and Y Eliashberg, situated between foliations and contact structures). Among the research articles one can find a detailed proof of an unpublished theorem (due to Duminy) concerning ends of leaves in exceptional minimal sets.
This volume contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Topology held at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro in January 1992. Bringing together about one hundred mathematicians from Brazil and around the world, the workshop covered a variety of topics in differential and algebraic topology, including group actions, foliations, low-dimensional topology, and connections to differential geometry. The main concentration was on foliation theory, but there was a lively exchange on other current topics in topology. The volume contains an excellent list of open problems in foliation research, prepared with the participation of some of the top world experts in this area. Also presented here are two surveys on group actions---finite group actions and rigidity theory for Anosov actions---as well as an elementary survey of Thurston's geometric topology in dimensions 2 and 3 that would be accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
Characteristic classes are central to the modern study of the topology and geometry of manifolds. They were first introduced in topology, where, for instance, they could be used to define obstructions to the existence of certain fiber bundles. Characteristic classes were later defined (via the Chern-Weil theory) using connections on vector bundles, thus revealing their geometric side. In the late 1960s new theories arose that described still finer structures. Examples of the so-called secondary characteristic classes came from Chern-Simons invariants, Gelfand-Fuks cohomology, and the characteristic classes of flat bundles. The new techniques are particularly useful for the study of fiber bundles whose structure groups are not finite dimensional. The theory of characteristic classes of surface bundles is perhaps the most developed. Here the special geometry of surfaces allows one to connect this theory to the theory of moduli space of Riemann surfaces, i.e., Teichmüller theory. In this book Morita presents an introduction to the modern theories of characteristic classes.