Topics And Methods In Q Series

The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the many aspects of the subject of basic hypergeometric series. The book essentially assumes no prior knowledge but eventually provides a comprehensive introduction to many important topics. After developing a treatment of historically important topics such as the q-binomial theorem, Heine's transformation, the Jacobi triple product identity, Ramanujan's 1-psi-1 summation formula, Bailey's 6-psi-6 summation formula and the Rogers-Fine identity, the book goes on to delve more deeply into important topics such as Bailey- and WP-Bailey pairs and chains, q-continued fractions, and mock theta functions. There are also chapters on other topics such as Lambert series and combinatorial proofs of basic hypergeometric identities. The book could serve as a textbook for the subject at the graduate level and as a textbook for a topic course at the undergraduate level (earlier chapters). It could also serve as a reference work for researchers in the area.

The guiding principle in this monograph is to develop a new theory of modular forms which encompasses most of the available theory of modular forms in the literature, such as those for congruence groups, Siegel and Hilbert modular forms, many types of automorphic forms on Hermitian symmetric domains, Calabi-Yau modular forms, with its examples such as Yukawa couplings and topological string partition functions, and even go beyond all these cases. Its main ingredient is the so-called 'Gauss-Manin connection in disguise'.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications q-Series and Partitions is based on the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part of the 1987-88 IMA program on APPLIED COMBINATORICS. We are grateful to the Scientific Committee: Victor Klee (Chairman), Daniel Kleitman, Dijen Ray-Chaudhuri and Dennis Stanton for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year long program. We especially thank the Workshop Organizer, Dennis Stanton, for organizing a workshop which brought together many of the major figures in a variety of research fields in which q-series and partitions are used. A vner Friedman Willard Miller, Jr. PREFACE This volume contains the Proceedings of the Workshop on q-Series and Parti tions held at the IMA on March 7-11, 1988. Also included are papers by Goodman and O'Hara, Macdonald, and Zeilberger on unimodality. This work was of substan tial interest and discussed by many participants in the Workshop. The papers have been grouped into four parts: identities, unimodality of Gaus sian polynomials, constant term problems and related integrals, and orthogonal polynomials. They represent a cross section of the recent work on q-series includ ing: partitions, combinatorics, Lie algebras, analysis, and mathematical physics. I would like to thank the staff of the IMA, and its directors, Avner Friedman and Willard Miller, Jr., for providing a wonderful environment for the Workshop. Patricia Brick and Kaye Smith prepared the manuscripts.

Each number is the catalogue of a specific school or college of the University.

This volume reflects the proceedings of the International Conference on Representations of Affine and Quantum Affine Algebras and Their Applications held at North Carolina State University (Raleigh). In recent years, the theory of affine and quantum affine Lie algebras has become an important area of mathematical research with numerous applications in other areas of mathematics and physics. Three areas of recent progress are the focus of this volume: affine and quantum affine algebras and their generalizations, vertex operator algebras and their representations, and applications in combinatorics and statistical mechanics. Talks given by leading international experts at the conference offered both overviews on the subjects and current research results. The book nicely presents the interplay of these topics recently occupying "centre stage" in the theory of infinite dimensional Lie theory.

This unique book explores the world of q, known technically as basic hypergeometric series, and represents the author’s personal and life-long study—inspired by Ramanujan—of aspects of this broad topic. While the level of mathematical sophistication is graduated, the book is designed to appeal to advanced undergraduates as well as researchers in the field. The principal aims are to demonstrate the power of the methods and the beauty of the results. The book contains novel proofs of many results in the theory of partitions and the theory of representations, as well as associated identities. Though not specifically designed as a textbook, parts of it may be presented in course work; it has many suitable exercises. After an introductory chapter, the power of q-series is demonstrated with proofs of Lagrange’s four-squares theorem and Gauss’s two-squares theorem. Attention then turns to partitions and Ramanujan’s partition congruences. Several proofs of these are given throughout the book. Many chapters are devoted to related and other associated topics. One highlight is a simple proof of an identity of Jacobi with application to string theory. On the way, we come across the Rogers–Ramanujan identities and the Rogers–Ramanujan continued fraction, the famous “forty identities” of Ramanujan, and the representation results of Jacobi, Dirichlet and Lorenz, not to mention many other interesting and beautiful results. We also meet a challenge of D.H. Lehmer to give a formula for the number of partitions of a number into four squares, prove a “mysterious” partition theorem of H. Farkas and prove a conjecture of R.Wm. Gosper “which even Erdős couldn’t do.” The book concludes with a look at Ramanujan’s remarkable tau function.