Potential Theory On Infinite Dimensional Abelian Groups

The series is devoted to the publication of monographs and high-level textbooks in mathematics, mathematical methods and their applications. Apart from covering important areas of current interest, a major aim is to make topics of an interdisciplinary nature accessible to the non-specialist. The works in this series are addressed to advanced students and researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics. In addition, it can serve as a guide for lectures and seminars on a graduate level. The series de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics was founded ca. 30 years ago by the late Professor Heinz Bauer and Professor Peter Gabriel with the aim to establish a series of monographs and textbooks of high standard, written by scholars with an international reputation presenting current fields of research in pure and applied mathematics. While the editorial board of the Studies has changed with the years, the aspirations of the Studies are unchanged. In times of rapid growth of mathematical knowledge carefully written monographs and textbooks written by experts are needed more than ever, not least to pave the way for the next generation of mathematicians. In this sense the editorial board and the publisher of the Studies are devoted to continue the Studies as a service to the mathematical community. Please submit any book proposals to Niels Jacob.

This proceedings volume can be considered as a monograph on the state-of-the-art in the wide range of analysis on infinite-dimensional algebraic-topological structures. Topics covered in this volume include integrability and regularity for Lie groups and Lie algebras, actions of infinite-dimensional Lie groups on manifolds of paths and related minimal orbits, quasi-invariant measures, white noise analysis, harmonic analysis on generalized convolution structures, and noncommutative geometry. A special feature of this volume is the interrelationship between problems of pure and applied mathematics and also between mathematics and physics.

Classical potential theory can be roughly characterized as the study of Newtonian potentials and the Laplace operator on the Euclidean space JR3. It was discovered around 1930 that there is a profound connection between classical potential 3 theory and the theory of Brownian motion in JR . The Brownian motion is determined by its semigroup of transition probabilities, the Brownian semigroup, and the connection between classical potential theory and the theory of Brownian motion can be described analytically in the following way: The Laplace operator is the infinitesimal generator for the Brownian semigroup and the Newtonian potential kernel is the" integral" of the Brownian semigroup with respect to time. This connection between classical potential theory and the theory of Brownian motion led Hunt (cf. Hunt [2]) to consider general "potential theories" defined in terms of certain stochastic processes or equivalently in terms of certain semi groups of operators on spaces of functions. The purpose of the present exposition is to study such general potential theories where the following aspects of classical potential theory are preserved: (i) The theory is defined on a locally compact abelian group. (ii) The theory is translation invariant in the sense that any translate of a potential or a harmonic function is again a potential, respectively a harmonic function; this property of classical potential theory can also be expressed by saying that the Laplace operator is a differential operator with constant co efficients.

The aim of the book is to give a unified approach to new developments in discrete potential theory and infinite network theory. The author confines himself to the finite energy case, but this does not result in loss of complexity. On the contrary, the functional analytic machinery may be used in analogy with potential theory on Riemann manifolds. The book is intended for researchers with interdisciplinary interests in one of the following fields: Markov chains, combinatorial graph theory, network theory, Dirichlet spaces, potential theory, abstract harmonic analysis, theory of boundaries.

This volume contains the expanded lecture notes of courses taught at the Emile Borel Centre of the Henri Poincare Institute (Paris). In the book, leading experts introduce recent research in their fields. The unifying theme is the study of heat kernels in various situations using related geometric and analytic tools. Topics include analysis of complex-coefficient elliptic operators, diffusions on fractals and on infinite-dimensional groups, heat kernel and isoperimetry on Riemannian manifolds, heat kernels and infinite dimensional analysis, diffusions and Sobolev-type spaces on metric spaces, quasi-regular mappings and $p$-Laplace operators, heat kernel and spherical inversion on $SL 2(C)$, random walks and spectral geometry on crystal lattices, isoperimetric and isocapacitary inequalities, and generating function techniques for random walks on graphs. This volume is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in random processes and analysis on manifolds.

The book is conceived as a text accompanying the traditional graduate courses on probability theory. An important feature of this enlarged version is the emphasis on algebraic-topological aspects leading to a wider and deeper understanding of basic theorems such as those on the structure of continuous convolution semigroups and the corresponding processes with independent increments. Fourier transformation ? the method applied within the settings of Banach spaces, locally compact Abelian groups and commutative hypergroups ? is given an in-depth discussion. This powerful analytic tool along with the relevant facts of harmonic analysis make it possible to study certain properties of stochastic processes in dependence of the algebraic-topological structure of their state spaces. In extension of the first edition, the new edition contains chapters on the probability theory of generalized convolution structures such as polynomial and Sturm?Liouville hypergroups, and on the central limit problem for groups such as tori, p-adic groups and solenoids.

This monograph presents the state of the art of convexity, with an emphasis to integral representation. The exposition is focused on Choquet's theory of function spaces with a link to compact convex sets. An important feature of the book is an interplay between various mathematical subjects, such as functional analysis, measure theory, descriptive set theory, Banach spaces theory and potential theory. A substantial part of the material is of fairly recent origin and many results appear in the book form for the first time. The text is self-contained and covers a wide range of applications. From the contents: Geometry of convex sets Choquet theory of function spaces Affine functions on compact convex sets Perfect classes of functions and representation of affine functions Simplicial function spaces Choquet's theory of function cones Topologies on boundaries Several results on function spaces and compact convex sets Continuous and measurable selectors Construction of function spaces Function spaces in potential theory and Dirichlet problem Applications