Nikolai Chernov, University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL,
and Roberto Markarian, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay

Chaotic Billiards

Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, Volume: 127
2006; 316 pp; hardcover
ISBN-10: 0-8218-4096-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-4096-2
Expected publication date is August 13, 2006.

This book covers one of the most exciting but most difficult topics in the modern theory of dynamical systems: chaotic billiards. In physics, billiard models describe various mechanical processes, molecular dynamics, and optical phenomena.

The theory of chaotic billiards has made remarkable progress in the past thirty-five years, but it remains notoriously difficult for the beginner, with main results scattered in hardly accessible research articles. This is the first and so far only book that covers all the fundamental facts about chaotic billiards in a complete and systematic manner. The book contains all the necessary definitions, full proofs of all the main theorems, and many examples and illustrations that help the reader to understand the material. Hundreds of carefully designed exercises allow the reader not only to become familiar with chaotic billiards but to master the subject.

The book addresses graduate students and young researchers in physics and mathematics. Prerequisites include standard graduate courses in measure theory, probability, Riemannian geometry, topology, and complex analysis. Some of this material is summarized in the appendices to the book.

Readership

Graduate students and research mathematicians interested in mathematical physics, statistical mechanics, dynamical systems, and ergodic theory.

Table of Contents

Simple examples
Basic constructions
Lyapunov exponents and hyperbolicity
Dispersing billiards
Dynamics of unstable manifolds
Ergodic properties
Statistical properties
Bunimovich billiards
General focusing chaotic billiards
Afterword
Measure theory
Probability theory
Ergodic theory
Bibliography
Index

Athanassios S. Fokas, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, Alexander R. Its, Indiana State University, Indianapolis, IN, Andrei A. Kapaev, Steklov Mathematical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Victor Yu. Novokshenov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ufa, Russia

Painleve Transcendents: The Riemann-Hilbert Approach

Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, Volume: 128
2006; approx. 560 pp; hardcover
ISBN-10: 0-8218-3651-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-3651-4
Expected publication date is August 11, 2006.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the French mathematician Paul Painleve and his students classified second order nonlinear ordinary differential equations with the property that the location of possible branch points and essential singularities of their solutions does not depend on initial conditions. It turned out that there are only six such equations (up to natural equivalence), which later became known as Painleve I-VI.

Although these equations were initially obtained answering a strictly mathematical question, they appeared later in an astonishing (and growing) range of applications, including, e.g., statistical physics, fluid mechanics, random matrices, and orthogonal polynomials. Actually, it is now becoming clear that the Painleve transcendents (i.e., the solutions of the Painleve equations) play the same role in nonlinear mathematical physics that the classical special functions, such as Airy and Bessel functions, play in linear physics.

The explicit formulas relating the asymptotic behaviour of the classical special functions at different critical points, play a crucial role in the applications of these functions. It is shown in this book, that even though the six Painleve equations are nonlinear, it is still possible, using a new technique called the Riemann-Hilbert formalism, to obtain analogous explicit formulas for the Painleve transcendents. This striking fact, apparently unknown to Painleve and his contemporaries, is the key ingredient for the remarkable applicability of these "nonlinear special functions".

The book describes in detail the Riemann-Hilbert method and emphasizes its close connection to classical monodromy theory of linear equations as well as to modern theory of integrable systems. In addition, the book contains an ample collection of material concerning the asymptotics of the Painleve functions and their various applications, which makes it a good reference source for everyone working in the theory and applications of Painleve equations and related areas.

Readership

Graduate students and research mathematicians interested in special functions, in particular, Painleve transcendents.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Painleve transcendents as nonlinear special functions

Part 1. Riemannian-Hilbert problem, isomonodromy method and special functions

Systems of linear ordinary differential equations with rational coefficients. Elements of the general theory
Monodromy theory and special functions
Inverse monodromy problem and Riemann-Hilbert factorization
Isomonodromy deformations. The Painleve equations
The isomonodromy method
Backlund transformations

Part 2. Asymptotics of the Painleve II transcendent. A case study

Asymptotic solutions of the second Painleve equation in the complex plane. Direct monodromy problem approach
Asymptotic solutions of the second Painleve equation in the complex plane. Inverse monodromy problem approach
PII asymptotics on the canonical six-rays. The purely imaginary case
PII asymptotics on the canonical six-rays. Real-valued case
PII quasi-linear Stokes phenomenon

Part 3. Asymptotics of the third Painleve transcendent

PIII equation, an overview
Sine-Gordon reduction of PIII
Canonical four-rays. Real-valued solutions of SG-PIII
Canonical four-rays. Singular solutions of the SG-PIII
Asymptotics in the complex plane of the SG-PIII transcendent
Proof of Theorem 3.4
The Birkhoff-Grothendieck theorem with a parameter
Bibliography
Subject index

Edited by: Andrew Markoe, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ,
and Eric Todd Quinto, Tufts University, Medford, MA

Integral Geometry and Tomography

Contemporary Mathematics, Volume: 405
2006; 155 pp; softcover
ISBN-10: 0-8218-3755-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-3755-9
Expected publication date is August 2, 2006.

This volume consists of a collection of papers that brings together fundamental research in Radon transforms, integral geometry, and tomography. It grew out of the Special Session at a Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society in 2004. The book contains very recent work of some of the top researchers in the field.

The articles in the book deal with the determination of properties of functions on a manifold by integral theoretic methods, or by determining the geometric structure of subsets of a manifold by analytic methods. Of particular concern are ways of reconstructing an unknown function from some of its projections.

Radon transforms were developed at the beginning of the twentieth century by researchers who were motivated by problems in differential geometry, mathematical physics, and partial differential equations. Later, medical applications of these transforms produced breakthroughs in imaging technology that resulted in the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for the development of computerized tomography. Today the subject boasts substantial cross-disciplinary interactions, both in pure and applied mathematics as well as medicine, engineering, biology, physics, geosciences, and industrial testing. Therefore, this volume should be of interest to a wide spectrum of researchers both in mathematics and in other fields.

Readership

Graduate students and research mathematicians interested in real analysis, integral geometry, and tomography.

Table of Contents

M. L. Agranovsky and E. T. Quinto -- Remarks on stationary sets for the wave equation
C. Berenstein, F. Gavilanez, and J. Baras -- Network tomography
J. Boman -- On stable inversion of the attenuated Radon transform with half data
M. Dobrescu and G. Olafsson -- Wavelet sets without groups
L. Ehrenpreis -- The Radon transform for functions defined on planes
F. B. Gonzalez and J. Zhang -- The modified wave equation on the sphere
A. Katsevich and A. Zamyatin -- Analysis of a family of exact inversion formulas for cone beam computer tomography
A. Markoe -- The $k$-plane transform and Riesz potentials
E. Ournycheva and B. Rubin -- The composite cosine transform on the Stiefel manifold and generalized zeta integrals
I. Pesenson -- Frames for spaces of Paley-Wiener functions on Riemannian manifolds
J. Rennie -- Properties of the stationary sets for the wave equation

Edited by: Jose A. de la Pena and Raymundo Bautista

Trends in Representation Theory of Algebras and Related Topics

Contemporary Mathematics, Volume: 406
2006; 270 pp; softcover
ISBN-10: 0-8218-3818-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-3818-1
Expected publication date is August 4, 2006.

This book is based on lectures given during a Workshop on Representations of Algebras and Related Topics. Some additional articles are included in order to complete a panoramic view of the main trends of the subject. The volume contains original presentations by leading algebraists addressed to specialists as well as to a broader mathematical audience. The articles include new proofs, examples, and detailed arguments. Topics under discussion include moduli spaces associated to quivers, canonical basis of quantum algebras, categorifications and derived categories, $A$-infinity algebras and functor categories, cluster algebras, support varieties for modules and complexes, the Gabriel-Roiter measure for modules, and selfinjective algebras.

Readership

Graduate students and research mathematicians interested in representation theory.

Table of Contents

A. Bakke Buan and R. Marsh -- Cluster-tilting theory
C. Geis, L. Le Bruyn, and M. Reineke -- Introduction to moduli spaces associated to quivers (With an appendix by Lieven Le Bruyn and Markus Reineke)
A. Hubery -- From triangulated categories to Lie algebras: A theorem of Peng and Xiao
B. Keller -- A-infinity algebras, modules and functor categories
H. Krause and D. Kussin -- Rouquier's theorem on representation dimension
C. M. Ringel -- Foundation of the representation theory of Artin algebras, using the Gabriel-Roiter measure.
R. Rouquier -- Categorification of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ and braid groups
A. Skowronski -- Selfinjective algebras: Finite and tame type
O. Solberg -- Support varieties for modules and complexes