Diophantine Approximation And Abelian Varieties

The 13 chapters of this book centre around the proof of Theorem 1 of Faltings' paper "Diophantine approximation on abelian varieties", Ann. Math.133 (1991) and together give an approach to the proof that is accessible to Ph.D-level students in number theory and algebraic geometry. Each chapter is based on an instructional lecture given by its author ata special conference for graduate students, on the topic of Faltings' paper.

This book describes the theories and developments in Nevanlinna theory and Diophantine approximation. Although these two subjects belong to the different areas: one in complex analysis and one in number theory, it has been discovered that a number of striking similarities exist between these two subjects. A growing understanding of these connections has led to significant advances in both fields. Outstanding conjectures from decades ago are being solved.Over the past 20 years since the first edition appeared, there have been many new and significant developments. The new edition greatly expands the materials. In addition, three new chapters were added. In particular, the theory of algebraic curves, as well as the algebraic hyperbolicity, which provided the motivation for the Nevanlinna theory.

This ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF MATHEMATICS aims to be a reference work for all parts of mathe matics. It is a translation with updates and editorial comments of the Soviet Mathematical Encyclopaedia published by 'Soviet Encyclopaedia Publishing House' in five volumes in 1977-1985. The annotated translation consists of ten volumes including a special index volume. There are three kinds of articles in this ENCYCLOPAEDIA. First of all there are survey-type articles dealing with the various main directions in mathematics (where a rather fme subdivi sion has been used). The main requirement for these articles has been that they should give a reasonably complete up-to-date account of the current state of affairs in these areas and that they should be maximally accessible. On the whole, these articles should be understandable to mathematics students in their first specialization years, to graduates from other mathematical areas and, depending on the specific subject, to specialists in other domains of science, en gineers and teachers of mathematics. These articles treat their material at a fairly general level and aim to give an idea of the kind of problems, techniques and concepts involved in the area in question. They also contain background and motivation rather than precise statements of precise theorems with detailed definitions and technical details on how to carry out proofs and constructions. The second kind of article, of medium length, contains more detailed concrete problems, results and techniques.

Diophantine Approximation is a branch of Number Theory having its origins intheproblemofproducing“best”rationalapproximationstogivenrealn- bers. Since the early work of Lagrange on Pell’s equation and the pioneering work of Thue on the rational approximations to algebraic numbers of degree ? 3, it has been clear how, in addition to its own speci?c importance and - terest, the theory can have fundamental applications to classical diophantine problems in Number Theory. During the whole 20th century, until very recent times, this fruitful interplay went much further, also involving Transcend- tal Number Theory and leading to the solution of several central conjectures on diophantine equations and class number, and to other important achie- ments. These developments naturally raised further intensive research, so at the moment the subject is a most lively one. This motivated our proposal for a C. I. M. E. session, with the aim to make it available to a public wider than specialists an overview of the subject, with special emphasis on modern advances and techniques. Our project was kindly supported by the C. I. M. E. Committee and met with the interest of a largenumberofapplicants;forty-twoparticipantsfromseveralcountries,both graduatestudentsandseniormathematicians,intensivelyfollowedcoursesand seminars in a friendly and co-operative atmosphere. The main part of the session was arranged in four six-hours courses by Professors D. Masser (Basel), H. P. Schlickewei (Marburg), W. M. Schmidt (Boulder) and M. Waldschmidt (Paris VI). This volume contains expanded notes by the authors of the four courses, together with a paper by Professor Yu. V.

A new and complete treatment of semi-abelian degenerations of abelian varieties, and their application to the construction of arithmetic compactifications of Siegel moduli space, with most of the results being published for the first time. Highlights of the book include a classification of semi-abelian schemes, construction of the toroidal and the minimal compactification over the integers, heights for abelian varieties over number fields, and Eichler integrals in several variables, together with a new approach to Siegel modular forms. A valuable source of reference for researchers and graduate students interested in algebraic geometry, Shimura varieties or diophantine geometry.

The 13 chapters of this book centre around the proof of Theorem 1 of Faltings' paper "Diophantine approximation on abelian varieties", Ann. Math.133 (1991) and together give an approach to the proof that is accessible to Ph.D-level students in number theory and algebraic geometry. Each chapter is based on an instructional lecture given by its author ata special conference for graduate students, on the topic of Faltings' paper.