This book is a systematic account of the impressive developments in the theory of symmetric manifolds achieved over the past 50 years. It contains detailed and friendly, but rigorous, proofs of the key results in the theory. Milestones are the study of the group of holomomorphic automorphisms of bounded domains in a complex Banach space (Vigué and Upmeier in the late 1970s), Kaup's theorem on the equivalence of the categories of symmetric Banach manifolds and that of hermitian Jordan triple systems, and the culminating point in the process: the Riemann mapping theorem for complex Banach spaces (Kaup, 1982). This led to the introduction of wide classes of Banach spaces known as JB∗-triples and JBW∗-triples whose geometry has been thoroughly studied by several outstanding mathematicians in the late 1980s. The book presents a good example of fruitful interaction between different branches of mathematics, making it attractive for mathematicians interested in various fields such as algebra, differential geometry and, of course, complex and functional analysis.

These are the proceedings of the Israel Seminar on the Geometric Aspects of Functional Analysis (GAFA) which was held between October 1985 and June 1986. The main emphasis of the seminar was on the study of the geometry of Banach spaces and in particular the study of convex sets in and infinite-dimensional spaces. The greater part of the volume is made up of original research papers; a few of the papers are expository in nature. Together, they reflect the wide scope of the problems studied at present in the framework of the geometry of Banach spaces.

The main topic of the book is amenable groups, i.e., groups on which there exist invariant finitely additive measures. It was discovered that the existence or non-existence of amenability is responsible for many interesting phenomena such as, e.g., the Banach-Tarski Paradox about breaking a sphere into two spheres of the same radius. Since then, amenability has been actively studied and a number of different approaches resulted in many examples of amenable and non-amenable groups. In the book, the author puts together main approaches to study amenability. A novel feature of the book is that the exposition of the material starts with examples which introduce a method rather than illustrating it. This allows the reader to quickly move on to meaningful material without learning and remembering a lot of additional definitions and preparatory results; those are presented after analyzing the main examples. The techniques that are used for proving amenability in this book are mainly a combination of analytic and probabilistic tools with geometric group theory.

Completion problems for operator matrices are concerned with the question of whether a partially specified operator matrix can be completed to form an operator of a desired type. The research devoted to this topic provides an excellent means to investigate the structure of operators. This book provides an overview of completion problems dealing with completions to different types of operators and can be considered as a natural extension of classical results concerned with matrix completions. The book assumes some basic familiarity with functional analysis and operator theory. It will be useful for graduate students and researchers interested in operator theory and the problem of matrix completions.

This book provides an introduction to the inverse eigenvalue problem for graphs (IEP-$G$) and the related area of zero forcing, propagation, and throttling. The IEP-$G$ grew from the intersection of linear algebra and combinatorics and has given rise to both a rich set of deep problems in that area as well as a breadth of “ancillary” problems in related areas. The IEP-$G$ asks a fundamental mathematical question expressed in terms of linear algebra and graph theory, but the significance of such questions goes beyond these two areas, as particular instances of the IEP-$G$ also appear as major research problems in other fields of mathematics, sciences and engineering. One approach to the IEP-$G$ is through rank minimization, a relevant problem in itself and with a large number of applications. During the past 10 years, important developments on the rank minimization problem, particularly in relation to zero forcing, have led to significant advances in the IEP-$G$. The monograph serves as an entry point and valuable resource that will stimulate future developments in this active and mathematically diverse research area.

This monograph presents a systematic theory of weak solutions in Hilbert-Sobolev spaces of initial-boundary value problems for parabolic systems of partial differential equations with general essential and natural boundary conditions and minimal hypotheses on coefficients. Applications to quasilinear systems are given, including local existence for large data, global existence near an attractor, the Leray and Hopf theorems for the Navier-Stokes equations and results concerning invariant regions. Supplementary material is provided, including a self-contained treatment of the calculus of Sobolev functions on the boundaries of Lipschitz domains and a thorough discussion of measurability considerations for elements of Bochner-Sobolev spaces. This book will be particularly useful both for researchers requiring accessible and broadly applicable formulations of standard results as well as for students preparing for research in applied analysis. Readers should be familiar with the basic facts of measure theory and functional analysis, including weak derivatives and Sobolev spaces. Prior work in partial differential equations is helpful but not required.

This book is an introduction to Hopf algebras in braided monoidal categories with applications to Hopf algebras in the usual sense. The main goal of the book is to present from scratch and with complete proofs the theory of Nichols algebras (or quantum symmetric algebras) and the surprising relationship between Nichols algebras and generalized root systems. In general, Nichols algebras are not classified by Cartan graphs and their root systems. However, extending partial results in the literature, the authors were able to associate a Cartan graph to a large class of Nichols algebras. This allows them to determine the structure of right coideal subalgebras of Nichols systems which generalize Nichols algebras. As applications of these results, the book contains a classification of right coideal subalgebras of quantum groups and of the small quantum groups, and a proof of the existence of PBW-bases that does not involve case by case considerations. The authors also include short chapter summaries at the beginning of each chapter and historical notes at the end of each chapter. The theory of Cartan graphs, Weyl groupoids, and generalized root systems appears here for the first time in a book form. Hence, the book serves as an introduction to the modern classification theory of pointed Hopf algebras for advanced graduate students and researchers working in categorial aspects and classification theory of Hopf algebras and their generalization.