In the decade since the discovery that Artin's braid groups enjoy a left-invariant linear ordering, several quite different approaches have been applied to understand this phenomenon. This book is an account of those approaches, involving self-distributive algebra, uniform finite trees, combinatorial group theory, mapping class groups, laminations, and hyperbolic geometry. This volume is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in algebra and topology.

Since the discovery that Artin's braid groups enjoy a left-invariant linear ordering, several different approaches have been used to understand this phenomenon. This text provides an account of those approaches, involving varied objects & domains as combinatorial group theory, self-distributive algebra & finite combinatorics.

This book is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to familarize themselves with research in braid groups, configuration spaces and their applications. Starting at the beginning, and assuming only basic topology and group theory, the volume's noted expositors take the reader through the fundamental theory and on to current research and applications in fields as varied as astrophysics, cryptography and robotics. As leading researchers themselves, the authors write enthusiastically about their topics, and include many striking illustrations. The chapters have their origins in tutorials given at a Summer School on Braids, at the National University of Singapore's Institute for Mathematical Sciences in June 2007, to an audience of more than thirty international graduate students.

This introduction to braid groups keeps prerequisites to a minimum, while discussing their rich mathematical properties and applications.

This book deals with the connections between topology and ordered groups. It begins with a self-contained introduction to orderable groups and from there explores the interactions between orderability and objects in low-dimensional topology, such as knot theory, braid groups, and 3-manifolds, as well as groups of homeomorphisms and other topological structures. The book also addresses recent applications of orderability in the studies of codimension-one foliations and Heegaard-Floer homology. The use of topological methods in proving algebraic results is another feature of the book. The book was written to serve both as a textbook for graduate students, containing many exercises, and as a reference for researchers in topology, algebra, and dynamical systems. A basic background in group theory and topology is the only prerequisite for the reader.

The Annual European Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, also known as the Logic Colloquium, is among the most prestigious annual meetings in the field. The current volume, with contributions from plenary speakers and selected special session speakers, contains both expository and research papers by some of the best logicians in the world. The most topical areas of current research are covered: valued fields, Hrushovski constructions (from model theory), algorithmic randomness, relative computability (from computability theory), strong forcing axioms and cardinal arithmetic, large cardinals and determinacy (from set theory), as well as foundational topics such as algebraic set theory, reverse mathematics, and unprovability. This volume will be invaluable for experts as well as those interested in an overview of central contemporary themes in mathematical logic.

The appearance of mapping class groups in mathematics is ubiquitous. The book presents 23 papers containing problems about mapping class groups, the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, Teichmuller geometry, and related areas. Each paper focusses completely on open problems and directions. The problems range in scope from specific computations, to broad programs. The goal is to have a rich source of problems which have been formulated explicitly and accessibly. The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains problems on the combinatorial and (co)homological group-theoretic aspects of mapping class groups, and the way in which these relate to problems in geometry and topology. Part II concentrates on connections with classification problems in 3-manifold theory, the theory of symplectic 4-manifolds, and algebraic geometry. A wide variety of problems, from understanding billiard trajectories to the classification of Kleinian groups, can be reduced to differential and synthetic geometry problems about moduli space. Such problems and connections are discussed in Part III. Mapping class groups are related, both concretely and philosophically, to a number of other groups, such as braid groups, lattices in semisimple Lie groups, and automorphism groups of free groups. Part IV concentrates on problems surrounding these relationships. This book should be of interest to anyone studying geometry, topology, algebraic geometry or infinite groups. It is meant to provide inspiration for everyone from graduate students to senior researchers.