The subject of this book is analysis on Wiener space by means of Dirichlet forms and Malliavin calculus. There are already several literature on this topic, but this book has some different viewpoints. First the authors review the theory of Dirichlet forms, but they observe only functional analytic, potential theoretical and algebraic properties. They do not mention the relation with Markov processes or stochastic calculus as discussed in usual books (e.g. Fukushima’s book). Even on analytic properties, instead of mentioning the Beuring-Deny formula, they discuss “carré du champ” operators introduced by Meyer and Bakry very carefully. Although they discuss when this “carré du champ” operator exists in general situation, the conditions they gave are rather hard to verify, and so they verify them in the case of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator in Wiener space later. (It should be noticed that one can easily show the existence of “carré du champ” operator in this case by using Shigekawa’s H-derivative.) In the part on Malliavin calculus, the authors mainly discuss the absolute continuity of the probability law of Wiener functionals. The Dirichlet form corresponds to the first derivative only, and so it is not easy to consider higher order derivatives in this framework. This is the reason why they discuss only the first step of Malliavin calculus. On the other hand, they succeeded to deal with some delicate problems (the absolute continuity of the probability law of the solution to stochastic differential equations with Lipschitz continuous coefficients, the domain of stochastic integrals (Itô-Ramer-Skorokhod integrals), etc.). This book focuses on the abstract structure of Dirichlet forms and Malliavin calculus rather than their applications. However, the authors give a lot of exercises and references and they may help the reader to study other topics which are not discussed in this book. Zentralblatt Math, Reviewer: S.Kusuoka (Hongo)

The series is aimed specifically at publishing peer reviewed reviews and contributions presented at workshops and conferences. Each volume is associated with a particular conference, symposium or workshop. These events cover various topics within pure and applied mathematics and provide up-to-date coverage of new developments, methods and applications.

This unique book on the subject addresses fundamental problems and will be the standard reference for a long time to come. The authors have different scientific origins and combine these successfully, creating a text aimed at graduate students and researchers that can be used for courses and seminars.

The series is aimed specifically at publishing peer reviewed reviews and contributions presented at workshops and conferences. Each volume is associated with a particular conference, symposium or workshop. These events cover various topics within pure and applied mathematics and provide up-to-date coverage of new developments, methods and applications.

The purpose of this book is to give a streamlined introduction to the theory of (not necessarily symmetric) Dirichlet forms on general state spaces. It includes both the analytic and the probabilistic part of the theory up to and including the construction of an associated Markov process. It is based on recent joint work of S. Albeverio and the two authors and on a one-year-course on Dirichlet forms taught by the second named author at the University of Bonn in 1990/9l. It addresses both researchers and graduate students who require a quick but complete introduction to the theory. Prerequisites are a basic course in probabil ity theory (including elementary martingale theory up to the optional sampling theorem) and a sound knowledge of measure theory (as, for example, to be found in Part I of H. Bauer [B 78]). Furthermore, an elementary course on lin ear operators on Banach and Hilbert spaces (but without spectral theory) and a course on Markov processes would be helpful though most of the material needed is included here.

This volume and "IStochastic Processes, Physics and Geometry: New Interplays II" present state-of-the-art research currently unfolding at the interface between mathematics and physics. Included are select articles from the international conference held in Leipzig (Germany) in honor of Sergio Albeverio's sixtieth birthday. The theme of the conference, "Infinite Dimensional (Stochastic) Analysis and Quantum Physics", was chosen to reflect Albeverio's wide-ranging scientific interests. The articles in these books reflect that broad range of interests and provide a detailed overview highlighting the deep interplay among stochastic processes, mathematical physics, and geometry. The contributions are written by internationally recognized experts in the fields of stochastic analysis, linear and nonlinear (deterministic and stochastic) PDEs, infinite dimensional analysis, functional analysis, commutative and noncommutative probability theory, integrable systems, quantum and statistical mechanics, geometric quantization, and neural networks. Also included are applications in biology and other areas. Most of the contributions are high-level research papers. However, there are also some overviews on topics of general interest. The articles selected for publication in these volumes were specifically chosen to introduce readers to advanced topics, to emphasize interdisciplinary connections, and to stress future research directions. Volume I contains contributions from invited speakers; Volume II contains additional contributed papers. Members of the Canadian Mathematical Society may order at the AMS member price.

Since the publication of the first edition in 1994, this book has attracted constant interests from readers and is by now regarded as a standard reference for the theory of Dirichlet forms. For the present second edition, the authors not only revise