The subject of these notes is the character variety of representations of a surface group in a Lie group. The author emphasizes the various points of view (combinatorial, differential, and algebraic) and is interested in the description of its smooth points, symplectic structure, volume and connected components. He also shows how a three manifold bounded by the surface leaves a trace in this character variety. These notes were originally designed for students with only elementary knowledge of differential geometry and topology. In the first chapters, the author does not focus on the details of the differential geometric constructions and refers to classical textbooks, while in the more advanced chapters proofs occasionally are provided only for special cases where they convey the flavor of the general arguments. These notes might also be used by researchers entering this fast expanding field as motivation for further studies. The concluding paragraph of every chapter provides suggestions for further research.

Inspired by classical geometry, geometric group theory has in turn provided a variety of applications to geometry, topology, group theory, number theory and graph theory. This carefully written textbook provides a rigorous introduction to this rapidly evolving field whose methods have proven to be powerful tools in neighbouring fields such as geometric topology. Geometric group theory is the study of finitely generated groups via the geometry of their associated Cayley graphs. It turns out that the essence of the geometry of such groups is captured in the key notion of quasi-isometry, a large-scale version of isometry whose invariants include growth types, curvature conditions, boundary constructions, and amenability. This book covers the foundations of quasi-geometry of groups at an advanced undergraduate level. The subject is illustrated by many elementary examples, outlooks on applications, as well as an extensive collection of exercises.

An accessible introduction to Poisson geometry suitable for graduate students.

Contains papers based on talks delivered at the AMS-IMS-SIAM Summer Research Conference on the Geometry of Group Representations, held at the University of Colorado in Boulder in July 1987. This work offers an understanding of the state of research in the geometry of group representations and their applications.

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 volume provides an overview of modern advances in representation theory from a geometric standpoint. The techniques developed are quite general and can be applied to other areas such as quantum groups, affine Lie groups, and quantum field theory.

This book is a compilation of several works from well-recognized figures in the field of Representation Theory. The presentation of the topic is unique in offering several different points of view, which should makethe book very useful to students and experts alike.Presents several different points of view on key topics in representation theory, from internationally known experts in the field