Physics On Manifolds

Illustrates developments in the many areas of contemporary physics which have benefitted from the work and influence of Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat. The work considers the role of geometry of manifolds in space-time physics and that of functional analysis in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.

This reference book, which has found wide use as a text, provides an answer to the needs of graduate physical mathematics students and their teachers. The present edition is a thorough revision of the first, including a new chapter entitled ``Connections on Principle Fibre Bundles'' which includes sections on holonomy, characteristic classes, invariant curvature integrals and problems on the geometry of gauge fields, monopoles, instantons, spin structure and spin connections. Many paragraphs have been rewritten, and examples and exercises added to ease the study of several chapters. The index includes over 130 entries.

This is a volume originating from the Conference on Partial Differential Equations and Applications, which was held in Moscow in November 2018 in memory of professor Boris Sternin and attracted more than a hundred participants from eighteen countries. The conference was mainly dedicated to partial differential equations on manifolds and their applications in mathematical physics, geometry, topology, and complex analysis. The volume contains selected contributions by leading experts in these fields and presents the current state of the art in several areas of PDE. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students specializing in partial differential equations, mathematical physics, topology, geometry, and their applications. The readers will benefit from the interplay between these various areas of mathematics.

This book sets forth the basic principles of tensors and manifolds and describes how the mathematics underlies elegant geometrical models of classical mechanics, relativity and elementary particle physics.

Starting from an undergraduate level, this book systematically develops the basics of • Calculus on manifolds, vector bundles, vector fields and differential forms, • Lie groups and Lie group actions, • Linear symplectic algebra and symplectic geometry, • Hamiltonian systems, symmetries and reduction, integrable systems and Hamilton-Jacobi theory. The topics listed under the first item are relevant for virtually all areas of mathematical physics. The second and third items constitute the link between abstract calculus and the theory of Hamiltonian systems. The last item provides an introduction to various aspects of this theory, including Morse families, the Maslov class and caustics. The book guides the reader from elementary differential geometry to advanced topics in the theory of Hamiltonian systems with the aim of making current research literature accessible. The style is that of a mathematical textbook,with full proofs given in the text or as exercises. The material is illustrated by numerous detailed examples, some of which are taken up several times for demonstrating how the methods evolve and interact.

This book is based on courses taken by advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in mathematics and physics at Michigan State University. The courses were intended to present an introduction to the expanse of modern mathematics and its applications in modern mathematics and its application in modern physics. This book gives an introduction perspective to young students intending to go into a field of pure mathematics, and who, with the usual 'pigeon-hold' graduate curriculum, will not get an overall perspective for several years, much less any idea of application.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Colloquium "Analysis, Manifolds and Physics" organized in honour of Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat by her friends, collaborators and former students, on June 3, 4 and 5, 1992 in Paris. Its title accurately reflects the domains to which Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat has made essential contributions. Since the rise of General Relativity, the geometry of Manifolds has become a non-trivial part of space-time physics. At the same time, Functional Analysis has been of enormous importance in Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Field Theory. Its role becomes decisive when one considers the global behaviour of solutions of differential systems on manifolds. In this sense, General Relativity is an exceptional theory in which the solutions of a highly non-linear system of partial differential equations define by themselves the very manifold on which they are supposed to exist. This is why a solution of Einstein's equations cannot be physically interpreted before its global behaviour is known, taking into account the entire hypothetical underlying manifold. In her youth, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat contributed in a spectacular way to this domain stretching between physics and mathematics, when she gave the proof of the existence of solutions to Einstein's equations on differential manifolds of a quite general type. The methods she created have been worked out by the French school of mathematics, principally by Jean Leray. Her first proof of the local existence and uniqueness of solutions of Einstein's equations inspired Jean Leray's theory of general hyperbolic systems.

This textbook delves into the theory behind differentiable manifolds while exploring various physics applications along the way. Included throughout the book are a collection of exercises of varying degrees of difficulty. Differentiable Manifolds is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in a theoretical physics approach to the subject. Prerequisites include multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations and a basic knowledge of analytical mechanics.