Analysis, manifolds, and physics. 92 applications /Part II

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, Cecile DeWitt-Morette0444870717, 9780444870711

This second, companion volume contains 92 applications developing concepts and theorems presented or mentioned in the first volume. Introductions to and applications in several areas not previously covered are also included such as graded algebras with applications to Clifford algebras and (S)pin groups, Weyl Spinors, Majorana pinors, homotopy, supersmooth mappings and Berezin integration, Noether’s theorems, homogeneous spaces with applications to Stiefel and Grassmann manifolds, cohomology with applications to (S)pin structures, Bäcklund transformations, Poisson manifolds, conformal transformations, Kaluza-Klein theories, Calabi-Yau spaces, universal bundles, bundle reduction and symmetry breaking, Euler-Poincaré characteristics, Chern-Simons classes, anomalies, Sobolev embedding, Sobolev inequalities, Wightman distributions and Schwinger functions.
The material included covers an unusually broad area and the choice of problems is guided by recent applications of differential geometry to fundamental problems of physics as well as by the authors’ personal interests. Many mathematical tools of interest to physicists are presented in a self-contained manner, or are complementary to material already presented in part I. All the applications are presented in the form of problems with solutions in order to stress the questions the authors wished to answer and the fundamental ideas underlying applications. The answers to the solutions are explicitly worked out, with the rigor necessary for a correct usage of the concepts and theorems used in the book. This approach also makes part I accessible to a much larger audience.
The book has been enriched by contributions from Charles Doering, Harold Grosse, B. Kent Harrison, N.H. Ibragimov and Carlos Moreno, and collaborations with Ioannis Bakas, Steven Carlip, Gary Hamrick, Humberto La Roche and Gary Sammelmann.