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The study of the mapping class group Mod(S) is a classical topic that is experiencing a renaissance. It lies at the juncture of geometry, topology, and group theory. This book explains as many important theorems, examples, and techniques as possible, quickly and directly, while at the same time giving full details and keeping the text nearly self-contained. The book is suitable for graduate students.

Mumford-Tate groups are the fundamental symmetry groups of Hodge theory, a subject which rests at the center of contemporary complex algebraic geometry. This book is the first comprehensive exploration of Mumford-Tate groups and domains. Containing basic theory and a wealth of new views and results, it will become an essential resource for graduate students and researchers. Although Mumford-Tate groups can be defined for general structures, their theory and use to date has mainly been in the classical case of abelian varieties. While the book does examine this area, it focuses on the nonclassical case. The general theory turns out to be very rich, such as in the unexpected connections of finite dimensional and infinite dimensional representation theory of real, semisimple Lie groups. The authors give the complete classification of Hodge representations, a topic that should become a standard in the finite-dimensional representation theory of noncompact, real, semisimple Lie groups. They also indicate that in the future, a connection seems ready to be made between Lie groups that admit discrete series representations and the study of automorphic cohomology on quotients of Mumford-Tate domains by arithmetic groups. Bringing together complex geometry, representation theory, and arithmetic, this book opens up a fresh perspective on an important subject.

This book uses the hypoelliptic Laplacian to evaluate semisimple orbital integrals in a formalism that unifies index theory and the trace formula. The hypoelliptic Laplacian is a family of operators that is supposed to interpolate between the ordinary Laplacian and the geodesic flow. It is essentially the weighted sum of a harmonic oscillator along the fiber of the tangent bundle, and of the generator of the geodesic flow. In this book, semisimple orbital integrals associated with the heat kernel of the Casimir operator are shown to be invariant under a suitable hypoelliptic deformation, which is constructed using the Dirac operator of Kostant. Their explicit evaluation is obtained by localization on geodesics in the symmetric space, in a formula closely related to the Atiyah-Bott fixed point formulas. Orbital integrals associated with the wave kernel are also computed. Estimates on the hypoelliptic heat kernel play a key role in the proofs, and are obtained by combining analytic, geometric, and probabilistic techniques. Analytic techniques emphasize the wavelike aspects of the hypoelliptic heat kernel, while geometrical considerations are needed to obtain proper control of the hypoelliptic heat kernel, especially in the localization process near the geodesics. Probabilistic techniques are especially relevant, because underlying the hypoelliptic deformation is a deformation of dynamical systems on the symmetric space, which interpolates between Brownian motion and the geodesic flow. The Malliavin calculus is used at critical stages of the proof.

Elliptic Talesdescribes the latest developments in number theory by looking at one of the most exciting unsolved problems in contemporary mathematics--the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture. The Clay Mathematics Institute is offering a prize of $1 million to anyone who can discover a general solution to the problem. In this book, Avner Ash and Robert Gross guide readers through the mathematics they need to understand this captivating problem. The key to the conjecture lies in elliptic curves, which are cubic equations in two variables. These equations may appear simple, yet they arise from some very deep--and often very mystifying--mathematical ideas. Using only basic algebra and calculus while presenting numerous eye-opening examples, Ash and Gross make these ideas accessible to general readers, and in the process venture to the very frontiers of modern mathematics. Along the way, they give an informative and entertaining introduction to some of the most profound discoveries of the last three centuries in algebraic geometry, abstract algebra, and number theory. They demonstrate how mathematics grows more abstract to tackle ever more challenging problems, and how each new generation of mathematicians builds on the accomplishments of those who preceded them. Ash and Gross fully explain how the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture sheds light on the number theory of elliptic curves, and how it provides a beautiful and startling connection between two very different objects arising from an elliptic curve, one based on calculus, the other on algebra.