This volume contains selected expository lectures delivered at the 2018 Maurice Auslander Distinguished Lectures and International Conference, held April 25–30, 2018, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, MA. Reflecting recent developments in modern representation theory of algebras, the selected topics include an introduction to a new class of quiver algebras on surfaces, called “geodesic ghor algebras”, a detailed presentation of Feynman categories from a representation-theoretic viewpoint, connections between representations of quivers and the structure theory of Coxeter groups, powerful new applications of approximable triangulated categories, new results on the heart of a t t-structure, and an introduction to methods of constructive category theory.

This book is intended as an introductory text on the subject of Lie groups and algebras and their role in various fields of mathematics and physics. It is written by and for researchers who are primarily analysts or physicists, not algebraists or geometers. Not that we have eschewed the algebraic and geo metric developments. But we wanted to present them in a concrete way and to show how the subject interacted with physics, geometry, and mechanics. These interactions are, of course, manifold; we have discussed many of them here-in particular, Riemannian geometry, elementary particle physics, sym metries of differential equations, completely integrable Hamiltonian systems, and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Much ofthe material we have treated is standard and widely available; but we have tried to steer a course between the descriptive approach such as found in Gilmore and Wybourne, and the abstract mathematical approach of Helgason or Jacobson. Gilmore and Wybourne address themselves to the physics community whereas Helgason and Jacobson address themselves to the mathematical community. This book is an attempt to synthesize the two points of view and address both audiences simultaneously. We wanted to present the subject in a way which is at once intuitive, geometric, applications oriented, mathematically rigorous, and accessible to students and researchers without an extensive background in physics, algebra, or geometry.

This volume, dedicated to the memory of the great American mathematician Bertram Kostant (May 24, 1928 – February 2, 2017), is a collection of 19 invited papers by leading mathematicians working in Lie theory, representation theory, algebra, geometry, and mathematical physics. Kostant’s fundamental work in all of these areas has provided deep new insights and connections, and has created new fields of research. This volume features the only published articles of important recent results of the contributors with full details of their proofs. Key topics include: Poisson structures and potentials (A. Alekseev, A. Berenstein, B. Hoffman) Vertex algebras (T. Arakawa, K. Kawasetsu) Modular irreducible representations of semisimple Lie algebras (R. Bezrukavnikov, I. Losev) Asymptotic Hecke algebras (A. Braverman, D. Kazhdan) Tensor categories and quantum groups (A. Davydov, P. Etingof, D. Nikshych) Nil-Hecke algebras and Whittaker D-modules (V. Ginzburg) Toeplitz operators (V. Guillemin, A. Uribe, Z. Wang) Kashiwara crystals (A. Joseph) Characters of highest weight modules (V. Kac, M. Wakimoto) Alcove polytopes (T. Lam, A. Postnikov) Representation theory of quantized Gieseker varieties (I. Losev) Generalized Bruhat cells and integrable systems (J.-H. Liu, Y. Mi) Almost characters (G. Lusztig) Verlinde formulas (E. Meinrenken) Dirac operator and equivariant index (P.-É. Paradan, M. Vergne) Modality of representations and geometry of θ-groups (V. L. Popov) Distributions on homogeneous spaces (N. Ressayre) Reduction of orthogonal representations (J.-P. Serre)

This book is based on lectures delivered at Harvard in the Spring of 1991 and at the University of Utah during the academic year 1992-93. Formally, the book assumes only general algebraic knowledge (rings, modules, groups, Lie algebras, functors etc.). It is helpful, however, to know some basics of algebraic geometry and representation theory. Each chapter begins with its own introduction, and most sections even have a short overview. The purpose of what follows is to explain the spirit of the book and how different parts are linked together without entering into details. The point of departure is the notion of the left spectrum of an associative ring, and the first natural steps of general theory of noncommutative affine, quasi-affine, and projective schemes. This material is presented in Chapter I. Further developments originated from the requirements of several important examples I tried to understand, to begin with the first Weyl algebra and the quantum plane. The book reflects these developments as I worked them out in reallife and in my lectures. In Chapter 11, we study the left spectrum and irreducible representations of a whole lot of rings which are of interest for modern mathematical physics. The dasses of rings we consider indude as special cases: quantum plane, algebra of q-differential operators, (quantum) Heisenberg and Weyl algebras, (quantum) enveloping algebra ofthe Lie algebra sl(2) , coordinate algebra of the quantum group SL(2), the twisted SL(2) of Woronowicz, so called dispin algebra and many others.

In this new textbook, acclaimed author John Stillwell presents a lucid introduction to Lie theory suitable for junior and senior level undergraduates. In order to achieve this, he focuses on the so-called "classical groups'' that capture the symmetries of real, complex, and quaternion spaces. These symmetry groups may be represented by matrices, which allows them to be studied by elementary methods from calculus and linear algebra. This naive approach to Lie theory is originally due to von Neumann, and it is now possible to streamline it by using standard results of undergraduate mathematics. To compensate for the limitations of the naive approach, end of chapter discussions introduce important results beyond those proved in the book, as part of an informal sketch of Lie theory and its history. John Stillwell is Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of several highly regarded books published by Springer, including The Four Pillars of Geometry (2005), Elements of Number Theory (2003), Mathematics and Its History (Second Edition, 2002), Numbers and Geometry (1998) and Elements of Algebra (1994).

This book presents a comprehensive treatment of important new ideas on Dirac operators and Dirac cohomology. Using Dirac operators as a unifying theme, the authors demonstrate how some of the most important results in representation theory fit together when viewed from this perspective. The book is an excellent contribution to the mathematical literature of representation theory, and this self-contained exposition offers a systematic examination and panoramic view of the subject. The material will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in representation theory, differential geometry, and physics.

Matrix algebra has been called "the arithmetic of higher mathematics" [Be]. We think the basis for a better arithmetic has long been available, but its versatility has hardly been appreciated, and it has not yet been integrated into the mainstream of mathematics. We refer to the system commonly called 'Clifford Algebra', though we prefer the name 'Geometric Algebra' suggested by Clifford himself. Many distinct algebraic systems have been adapted or developed to express geometric relations and describe geometric structures. Especially notable are those algebras which have been used for this purpose in physics, in particular, the system of complex numbers, the quaternions, matrix algebra, vector, tensor and spinor algebras and the algebra of differential forms. Each of these geometric algebras has some significant advantage over the others in certain applications, so no one of them provides an adequate algebraic structure for all purposes of geometry and physics. At the same time, the algebras overlap considerably, so they provide several different mathematical representations for individual geometrical or physical ideas.