Topology Of Stratified Spaces

This book explores the study of singular spaces using techniques from areas within geometry and topology and the interactions among them.

This book provides the theory for stratified spaces, along with important examples and applications, that is analogous to the surgery theory for manifolds. In the first expository account of this field, Weinberger provides topologists with a new way of looking at the classification theory of singular spaces with his original results. Divided into three parts, the book begins with an overview of modern high-dimensional manifold theory. Rather than including complete proofs of all theorems, Weinberger demonstrates key constructions, gives convenient formulations, and shows the usefulness of the technology. Part II offers the parallel theory for stratified spaces. Here, the topological category is most completely developed using the methods of "controlled topology." Many examples illustrating the topological invariance and noninvariance of obstructions and characteristic classes are provided. Applications for embeddings and immersions of manifolds, for the geometry of group actions, for algebraic varieties, and for rigidity theorems are found in Part III. This volume will be of interest to topologists, as well as mathematicians in other fields such as differential geometry, operator theory, and algebraic geometry.

The central theme of this book is the restoration of Poincaré duality on stratified singular spaces by using Verdier-self-dual sheaves such as the prototypical intersection chain sheaf on a complex variety. Highlights include complete and detailed proofs of decomposition theorems for self-dual sheaves, explanation of methods for computing twisted characteristic classes and an introduction to the author's theory of non-Witt spaces and Lagrangian structures.

This book provides the theory for stratified spaces, along with important examples and applications, that is analogous to the surgery theory for manifolds. In the first expository account of this field, Weinberger provides topologists with a new way of looking at the classification theory of singular spaces with his original results. Divided into three parts, the book begins with an overview of modern high-dimensional manifold theory. Rather than including complete proofs of all theorems, Weinberger demonstrates key constructions, gives convenient formulations, and shows the usefulness of the technology. Part II offers the parallel theory for stratified spaces. Here, the topological category is most completely developed using the methods of "controlled topology." Many examples illustrating the topological invariance and noninvariance of obstructions and characteristic classes are provided. Applications for embeddings and immersions of manifolds, for the geometry of group actions, for algebraic varieties, and for rigidity theorems are found in Part III. This volume will be of interest to topologists, as well as mathematicians in other fields such as differential geometry, operator theory, and algebraic geometry.

The book provides an introduction to stratification theory leading the reader up to modern research topics in the field. The first part presents the basics of stratification theory, in particular the Whitney conditions and Mather's control theory, and introduces the notion of a smooth structure. Moreover, it explains how one can use smooth structures to transfer differential geometric and analytic methods from the arena of manifolds to stratified spaces. In the second part the methods established in the first part are applied to particular classes of stratified spaces like for example orbit spaces. Then a new de Rham theory for stratified spaces is established and finally the Hochschild (co)homology theory of smooth functions on certain classes of stratified spaces is studied. The book should be accessible to readers acquainted with the basics of topology, analysis and differential geometry.

This volume is based on the lecture notes of six courses delivered at a Cimpa Summer School in Temuco, Chile, in January 2001. Leading experts contribute with introductory articles covering a broad area in probability and its applications, such as mathematical physics and mathematics of finance. Written at graduate level, the lectures touch the latest advances on each subject, ranging from classical probability theory to modern developments. Thus the book will appeal to students, teachers and researchers working in probability theory or related fields.

Due to the lack of proper bibliographical sources stratification theory seems to be a "mysterious" subject in contemporary mathematics. This book contains a complete and elementary survey - including an extended bibliography - on stratification theory, including its historical development. Some further important topics in the book are: Morse theory, singularities, transversality theory, complex analytic varieties, Lefschetz theorems, connectivity theorems, intersection homology, complements of affine subspaces and combinatorics. The book is designed for all interested students or professionals in this area.

In this book, two seemingly unrelated fields -- algebraic topology and robust control -- are brought together. The book develops algebraic/differential topology from an application-oriented point of view. The book takes the reader on a path starting from a well-motivated robust stability problem, showing the relevance of the simplicial approximation theorem and how it can be efficiently implemented using computational geometry. The simplicial approximation theorem serves as a primer to more serious topological issues such as the obstruction to extending the Nyquist map, K-theory of robust stabilization, and eventually the differential topology of the Nyquist map, culminating in the explanation of the lack of continuity of the stability margin relative to rounding errors. The book is suitable for graduate students in engineering and/or applied mathematics, academic researchers and governmental laboratories.