The Topology Of Torus Actions On Symplectic Manifolds

The material and references in this extended second edition of "The Topology of Torus Actions on Symplectic Manifolds", published as Volume 93 in this series in 1991, have been updated. Symplectic manifolds and torus actions are investigated, with numerous examples of torus actions, for instance on some moduli spaces. Although the book is still centered on convexity results, it contains much more material, in particular lots of new examples and exercises.

The material and references in this extended second edition of "The Topology of Torus Actions on Symplectic Manifolds", published as Volume 93 in this series in 1991, have been updated. Symplectic manifolds and torus actions are investigated, with numerous examples of torus actions, for instance on some moduli spaces. Although the book is still centered on convexity results, it contains much more material, in particular lots of new examples and exercises.

Contributed lectures presented earlier at Winter School on Transformation Groups.

This book is about toric topology, a new area of mathematics that emerged at the end of the 1990s on the border of equivariant topology, algebraic and symplectic geometry, combinatorics, and commutative algebra. It has quickly grown into a very active area with many links to other areas of mathematics, and continues to attract experts from different fields. The key players in toric topology are moment-angle manifolds, a class of manifolds with torus actions defined in combinatorial terms. Construction of moment-angle manifolds relates to combinatorial geometry and algebraic geometry of toric varieties via the notion of a quasitoric manifold. Discovery of remarkable geometric structures on moment-angle manifolds led to important connections with classical and modern areas of symplectic, Lagrangian, and non-Kaehler complex geometry. A related categorical construction of moment-angle complexes and polyhedral products provides for a universal framework for many fundamental constructions of homotopical topology. The study of polyhedral products is now evolving into a separate subject of homotopy theory. A new perspective on torus actions has also contributed to the development of classical areas of algebraic topology, such as complex cobordism. This book includes many open problems and is addressed to experts interested in new ideas linking all the subjects involved, as well as to graduate students and young researchers ready to enter this beautiful new area.

Here, the study of torus actions on topological spaces is presented as a bridge connecting combinatorial and convex geometry with commutative and homological algebra, algebraic geometry, and topology. This established link helps in understanding the geometry and topology of a space with torus action by studying the combinatorics of the space of orbits. Conversely, subtle properties of a combinatorial object can be realized by interpreting it as the orbit structure for a propermanifold or as a complex acted on by a torus. The latter can be a symplectic manifold with Hamiltonian torus action, a toric variety or manifold, a subspace arrangement complement, etc., while the combinatorial objects include simplicial and cubical complexes, polytopes, and arrangements. This approachalso provides a natural topological interpretation in terms of torus actions of many constructions from commutative and homological algebra used in combinatorics. The exposition centers around the theory of moment-angle complexes, providing an effective way to study invariants of triangulations by methods of equivariant topology. The book includes many new and well-known open problems and would be suitable as a textbook. It will be useful for specialists both in topology and in combinatoricsand will help to establish even tighter connections between the subjects involved.

The goal of these notes is to provide a fast introduction to symplectic geometry for graduate students with some knowledge of differential geometry, de Rham theory and classical Lie groups. This text addresses symplectomorphisms, local forms, contact manifolds, compatible almost complex structures, Kaehler manifolds, hamiltonian mechanics, moment maps, symplectic reduction and symplectic toric manifolds. It contains guided problems, called homework, designed to complement the exposition or extend the reader's understanding. There are by now excellent references on symplectic geometry, a subset of which is in the bibliography of this book. However, the most efficient introduction to a subject is often a short elementary treatment, and these notes attempt to serve that purpose. This text provides a taste of areas of current research and will prepare the reader to explore recent papers and extensive books on symplectic geometry where the pace is much faster. For this reprint numerous corrections and clarifications have been made, and the layout has been improved.

Toric topology is the study of algebraic, differential, symplectic-geometric, combinatorial, and homotopy-theoretic aspects of a particular class of torus actions whose quotients are highly structured. The combinatorial properties of this quotient and the equivariant topology of the original manifold interact in a rich variety of ways, thus illuminating subtle aspects of both the combinatorics and the equivariant topology. Many of the motivations and guiding principles of the fieldare provided by (though not limited to) the theory of toric varieties in algebraic geometry as well as that of symplectic toric manifolds in symplectic geometry.This volume is the proceedings of the International Conference on Toric Topology held in Osaka in May-June 2006. It contains about 25 research and survey articles written by conference speakers, covering many different aspects of, and approaches to, torus actions, such as those mentioned above. Some of the manuscripts are survey articles, intended to give a broad overview of an aspect of the subject; all manuscripts consciously aim to be accessible to a broad reading audience of students andresearchers interested in the interaction of the subjects involved. We hope that this volume serves as an enticing invitation to this emerging field.