This is the first unified treatment in book form of the lower K-groups of Bass and the lower L-groups of the author.

This volume deals with the K-theoretical aspects of the group rings of braid groups of the 2-sphere. The lower algebraic K-theory of the finite subgroups of these groups up to eleven strings is computed using a wide variety of tools. Many of the techniques extend to the general case, and the results reveal new K-theoretical phenomena with respect to the previous study of other families of groups. The second part of the manuscript focusses on the case of the 4-string braid group of the 2-sphere, which is shown to be hyperbolic in the sense of Gromov. This permits the computation of the infinite maximal virtually cyclic subgroups of this group and their conjugacy classes, and applying the fact that this group satisfies the Fibred Isomorphism Conjecture of Farrell and Jones, leads to an explicit calculation of its lower K-theory. Researchers and graduate students working in K-theory and surface braid groups will constitute the primary audience of the manuscript, particularly those interested in the Fibred Isomorphism Conjecture, and the computation of Nil groups and the lower algebraic K-groups of group rings. The manuscript will also provide a useful resource to researchers who wish to learn the techniques needed to calculate lower algebraic K-groups, and the bibliography brings together a large number of references in this respect.

This book is a general introduction to Higher Algebraic K-groups of rings and algebraic varieties, which were first defined by Quillen at the beginning of the 70's. These K-groups happen to be useful in many different fields, including topology, algebraic geometry, algebra and number theory. The goal of this volume is to provide graduate students, teachers and researchers with basic definitions, concepts and results, and to give a sampling of current directions of research. Written by five specialists of different parts of the subject, each set of lectures reflects the particular perspective ofits author. As such, this volume can serve as a primer (if not as a technical basic textbook) for mathematicians from many different fields of interest.

Assuming no previous acquaintance with surgery theory and justifying all the algebraic concepts used by their relevance to topology, Dr Ranicki explains the applications of quadratic forms to the classification of topological manifolds, in a unified algebraic framework.

These notes are based on the course of lectures I gave at Harvard in the fall of 1964. They constitute a self-contained account of vector bundles and K-theory assuming only the rudiments of point-set topology and linear algebra. One of the features of the treatment is that no use is made of ordinary homology or cohomology theory. In fact, rational cohomology is defined in terms of K-theory.The theory is taken as far as the solution of the Hopf invariant problem and a start is mode on the J-homomorphism. In addition to the lecture notes proper, two papers of mine published since 1964 have been reproduced at the end. The first, dealing with operations, is a natural supplement to the material in Chapter III. It provides an alternative approach to operations which is less slick but more fundamental than the Grothendieck method of Chapter III, and it relates operations and filtration. Actually, the lectures deal with compact spaces, not cell-complexes, and so the skeleton-filtration does not figure in the notes. The second paper provides a new approach to K-theory and so fills an obvious gap in the lecture notes.

In algebraic topology some classical invariants - such as Betti numbers and Reidemeister torsion - are defined for compact spaces and finite group actions. They can be generalized using von Neumann algebras and their traces, and applied also to non-compact spaces and infinite groups. These new L2-invariants contain very interesting and novel information and can be applied to problems arising in topology, K-Theory, differential geometry, non-commutative geometry and spectral theory. The book, written in an accessible manner, presents a comprehensive introduction to this area of research, as well as its most recent results and developments.

This book provides a very elementary introduction to K-theory for C*-algebras, and is ideal for beginning graduate students.