Search results

Many are familiar with the beauty and ubiquity of fractal forms within nature. Unlike the study of smooth forms such as spheres, fractal geometry describes more familiar shapes and patterns, such as the complex contours of coastlines, the outlines of clouds, and the branching of trees. In this Very Short Introduction, Kenneth Falconer looks at the roots of the 'fractal revolution' that occurred in mathematics in the 20th century, presents the 'new geometry' of fractals, explains the basic conc...

very small domain (environment) affects through analytic continuation the whole of Riemann surface, or analytic manifold . Riemann was a master at applying this principle and also the first who noticed and emphasized that a meromorphic function is determined by its 'singularities'. Therefore he is rightly regarded as the father of the huge 'theory of singularities' which is developing so quickly and whose importance (also for physics) can hardly be overe~timated. Amazing and mysterious for our c...

This book aims to bridge the gap between probability and differential geometry. It gives two constructions of Brownian motion on a Riemannian manifold: an extrinsic one where the manifold is realized as an embedded sub manifold of Euclidean space and an intrinsic one based on the 'rolling' map. It is then shown how geometric quantities (such as curvature) are reflected by the behavior of Brownian paths and how that behavior can be used to extract information about geometric quantities. Readers s...

This book contains recent contributions to the fields of rigidity and symmetry with two primary focuses: to present the mathematically rigorous treatment of rigidity of structures and to explore the interaction of geometry, algebra and combinatorics. Contributions present recent trends and advances in discrete geometry, particularly in the theory of polytopes. The rapid development of abstract polytope theory has resulted in a rich theory featuring an attractive interplay of methods and tools fr...

Coarse geometry'' is the study of metric spaces from the asymptotic point of view: two metric spaces (such as the integers and the real numbers) which look the same from a great distance'' are considered to be equivalent. This book develops a cohomology theory appropriate to coarse geometry. The theory is then used to construct higher indices'' for elliptic operators on noncompact complete Riemannian manifolds. Such an elliptic operator has an index in the $K$-theory of a certain operator algebr...

This is the first account in book form of the theory of harmonic morphisms between Riemannian manifolds. Harmonic morphisms are maps which preserve Laplace's equation. They can be characterized as harmonic maps which satisfy an additional first order condition. Examples include harmonic functions, conformal mappings in the plane, and holomorphic functions with values in a Riemann surface. There are connections with many concepts in differential geometry, for example, Killing fields, geodesic...

This book arose out of original research on the extension of well-established applications of complex numbers related to Euclidean geometry and to the space-time symmetry of two-dimensional Special Relativity. The system of hyperbolic numbers is extensively studied, and a plain exposition of space-time geometry and trigonometry is given. Commutative hypercomplex systems with four unities are studied and attention is drawn to their interesting properties.

This volume features proceedings from the 1995 Joint Summer Research Conference on Finsler Geometry (Seattle, WA), chaired by S.S. Chern and co-chaired by D. Bao and Z. Shen. The editors of this volume have provided comprehensive and informative 'capsules' of presentations and technical reports. This was facilitated by classifying the papers into the following 6 separate sections - 3 of which are applied and 3 are pure: Finsler Geometry over the reals Complex Finsler geometry Generalized Finsler...

Convex and Discrete Geometry is an area of mathematics situated between analysis, geometry and discrete mathematics with numerous relations to other subdisciplines. This book provides a comprehensive overview of major results, methods and ideas of convex and discrete geometry and its applications. Besides being a graduate-level introduction to the field, it is a practical source of information and orientation for convex geometers, and useful to people working in the applied fields.

This text on analysis of Riemannian manifolds is a thorough introduction to topics covered in advanced research monographs on Atiyah-Singer index theory. The main theme is the study of heat flow associated to the Laplacians on differential forms. This provides a unified treatment of Hodge theory and the supersymmetric proof of the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet theorem. In particular, there is a careful treatment of the heat kernel for the Laplacian on functions. The Atiyah-Singer index theorem and its appl...

This book contains tutorial surveys and original research contributions in geometric computing, modeling, and reasoning. Highlighting the role of algebraic computation, it covers: surface blending, implicitization, and parametrization; automated deduction with Clifford algebra and in real geometry; and exact geometric computation. Basic techniques, advanced methods, and new findings are presented coherently, with many examples and illustrations. Using this book the reader will easily cross the f...