Geometric Methods In Physics Xxxvii

The book consists of articles based on the XXXVII Białowieża Workshop on Geometric Methods in Physics, 2018. The series of Białowieża workshops, attended by a community of experts at the crossroads of mathematics and physics, is a major annual event in the field. This edition of the workshop featured a special session dedicated to Professor Daniel Sternheimer on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The previously unpublished papers present cutting-edge current research, typically grounded in geometry and analysis, with applications to classical and quantum physics. For the past seven years, the Białowieża Workshops have been complemented by a School on Geometry and Physics comprising a series of advanced lectures for graduate students and early-career researchers. The book also includes abstracts of the five lecture series that were given at the seventh school.

After several decades of reduced contact, the interaction between physicists and mathematicians in the front-line research of both fields recently became deep and fruit ful again. Many of the leading specialists of both fields became involved in this devel opment. This process even led to the discovery of previously unsuspected connections between various subfields of physics and mathematics. In mathematics this concerns in particular knots von Neumann algebras, Kac-Moody algebras, integrable non-linear partial differential equations, and differential geometry in low dimensions, most im portantly in three and four dimensional spaces. In physics it concerns gravity, string theory, integrable classical and quantum field theories, solitons and the statistical me chanics of surfaces. New discoveries in these fields are made at a rapid pace. This conference brought together active researchers in these areas, reporting their results and discussing with other participants to further develop thoughts in future new directions. The conference was attended by SO participants from 15 nations. These proceedings document the program and the talks at the conference. This conference was preceded by a two-week summer school. Ten lecturers gave extended lectures on related topics. The proceedings of the school will also be published in the NATO-AS[ volume by Plenum. The Editors vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the many people who have made the conference a success. Furthermore, ·we appreciate the excellent talks. The active participation of everyone present made the conference lively and stimulating. All of this made our efforts worth while.

A monograph on some of the ways geometry and analysis can be used in mathematical problems of physical interest. The roles of symmetry, bifurcation and Hamiltonian systems in diverse applications are explored.

Both mathematics and mathematical physics have many active areas of research where the interplay between geometry and quantum field theory has proved extremely fruitful. Duality, gauge field theory, geometric quantization, Seiberg-Witten theory, spectral properties and families of Dirac operators, and the geometry of loop groups offer some striking recent examples of modern topics which stand on the borderline between geometry and analysis on the one hand and quantum field theory on the other, where the physicist's and the mathematician's perspective complement each other, leading to new mathematical and physical concepts and results.This volume introduces the reader to some basic mathematical and physical tools and methods required to follow the recent developments in some active areas of mathematical physics, including duality, gauge field theory, geometric quantization, Seiberg-Witten theory, spectral properties and families of Dirac operators, and the geometry of loop groups. It comprises seven self-contained lectures, which should progressively give the reader a precise idea of some of the techniques used in these areas, as well as a few short communications presented by young participants at the school.