Overview
This book provides the first lucid and accessible account to the modern study of the geometry of four-manifolds. It has become required reading for postgraduates and research workers whose research touches on this topic. Pre-requisites are a firm grounding in differential topology, and geometry as may be gained from the first year of a graduate course. The subject matter of this book is the most significant breakthrough in mathematics of the last fifty years, and Professor Donaldson won a Fields medal for his work in the area. The authors start from the standpoint that the fundamental group and intersection form of a four-manifold provides information about its homology and characteristic classes, but little of its differential topology. It turns out that the classification up to diffeomorphism of four-manifolds is very different from the classification of unimodular forms and that the study of this question leads naturally to the new Donaldson invariants of four-manifolds. A central theme of this book is that the appropriate geometrical tools for investigating these questions come from mathematical physics: the Yang-Mills theory and anti-self dual connections over four-manifolds. One of the many consquences of this theory is that 'exotic' smooth manifolds exist which are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to (4, and that large classes of forms cannot be realized as intersection forms whereas distinct manifolds may share the same form. These result have had far-reaching consequences in algebraic geometry, topology, and mathematical physics, and will continue to be a mainspring of mathematical research for years to come.
Full Product Details
Author: S. K. Donaldson (Professor of Mathematics, Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford) ,
P. B. Kronheimer (Professor of Mathematics, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University, USA) ,
P.B. Kromer (Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University, USA)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.679kg
ISBN: 9780198502692
ISBN 10: 0198502699
Pages: 452
Publication Date: 28 August 1997
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
... authoritative and comprehensive... it must be regarded as compulsory reading for any young researcher approaching this difficult but fascinating area. Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society
Author Information
Professor S. K. Donaldson, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 24-29 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LB. Professor P. B. Kronheimer, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2901, USA. Professor Donaldson won the Fields Medal for his work in the area of four-manifolds.
