Current Trends In Transformation Groups

This book provides an overview of some of the most active topics in the theory of transformation groups over the past decades and stresses advances obtained in the last dozen years. The emphasis is on actions of Lie groups on manifolds and CW complexes. Manifolds and actions of Lie groups on them are studied in the linear, semialgebraic, definable, analytic, smooth, and topological categories. Equivalent vector bundles play an important role. The work is divided into fifteen articles and will be of interest to anyone researching or studying transformations groups. The references make it easy to find details and original accounts of the topics surveyed, including tools and theories used in these accounts.

Contributed lectures presented earlier at Winter School on Transformation Groups.

This is a comprehensive exposition of topics covered by the American Mathematical Society’s classification “Global Analysis , dealing with modern developments in calculus expressed using abstract terminology. It will be invaluable for graduate students and researchers embarking on advanced studies in mathematics and mathematical physics.This book provides a comprehensive coverage of modern global analysis and geometrical mathematical physics, dealing with topics such as; structures on manifolds, pseudogroups, Lie groupoids, and global Finsler geometry; the topology of manifolds and differentiable mappings; differential equations (including ODEs, differential systems and distributions, and spectral theory); variational theory on manifolds, with applications to physics; function spaces on manifolds; jets, natural bundles and generalizations; and non-commutative geometry. - Comprehensive coverage of modern global analysis and geometrical mathematical physics- Written by world-experts in the field- Up-to-date contents

Not merely an account of new results, this book is also a guide to motivation behind present work and potential future developments. Readers can obtain an overall understanding of the sorts of problems one studies in group actions and the methods used to study such problems. The book will be accessible to advanced graduate students who have had the equivalent of three semesters of graduate courses in topology; some previous acquaintance with the fundamentals of transformation groups is also highly desirable. The articles in this book are mainly based upon lectures at the 1983 AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference, Group Actions on Manifolds, held at the University of Colorado. A major objective was to provide an overall account of current knowledge in transformation groups; a number of survey articles describe the present state of the subject from several complementary perspectives. The book also contains some research articles, generally dealing with results presented at the conference. Finally, there is a discussion of current problems on group actions and an acknowledgment of the work and influence of D. Montgomery on the subject.

This book is based on the extensive experience of teaching for mathematics, physics and engineering students in Russia, USA, South Africa and Sweden. The author provides students and teachers with an easy to follow textbook spanning a variety of topics. The methods of local Lie groups discussed in the book provide universal and effective method for solving nonlinear differential equations analytically. Introduction to approximate transformation groups also contained in the book helps to develop skills in constructing approximate solutions for differential equations with a small parameter.