This monograph studies the heat kernel for the spin-tensor Laplacians on Lie groups and maximally symmetric spaces. It introduces many original ideas, methods, and tools developed by the author and provides a list of all known exact results in explicit form – and derives them – for the heat kernel on spheres and hyperbolic spaces. Part I considers the geometry of simple Lie groups and maximally symmetric spaces in detail, and Part II discusses the calculation of the heat kernel for scalar, spinor, and generic Laplacians on spheres and hyperbolic spaces in various dimensions. This text will be a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students working in various areas of mathematics – such as global analysis, spectral geometry, stochastic processes, and financial mathematics – as well in areas of mathematical and theoretical physics – including quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory, and statistical physics.

This monograph studies the heat kernel for the spin-tensor Laplacians on Lie groups and maximally symmetric spaces. It introduces many original ideas, methods, and tools developed by the author and provides a list of all known exact results in explicit form - and derives them - for the heat kernel on spheres and hyperbolic spaces. Part I considers the geometry of simple Lie groups and maximally symmetric spaces in detail, and Part II discusses the calculation of the heat kernel for scalar, spinor, and generic Laplacians on spheres and hyperbolic spaces in various dimensions. This text will be a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students working in various areas of mathematics - such as global analysis, spectral geometry, stochastic processes, and financial mathematics - as well in areas of mathematical and theoretical physics - including quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory, and statistical physics.

The book contains survey and research articles devoted mainly to geometry and harmonic analysis of symmetric spaces and to corresponding aspects of group representation theory. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Russian mathematician, F. I. Karpelevich (1927-2000). Of particular interest are the survey articles by Sawyer on the Abel transform on noncompact Riemannian symmetric spaces, and by Anker and Ostellari on estimates for heat kernels on such spaces, as well as thearticle by Bernstein and Gindikin on integral geometry for families of curves. There are also many research papers on topics of current interest. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in harmonic analysis and representation theory.

This volume is comprised of two parts: the first contains articles by S. N. Evans, F. Ledrappier, and Figa-Talomanaca. These articles arose from a Centre de Recherches de Mathematiques (CRM) seminar entitiled, ``Topics in Probability on Lie Groups: Boundary Theory''. Evans gives a synthesis of his pre-1992 work on Gaussian measures on vector spaces over a local field. Ledrappier uses the freegroup on $d$ generators as a paradigm for results on the asymptotic properties of random walks and harmonic measures on the Martin boundary. These articles are followed by a case study by Figa-Talamanca using Gelfand pairs to study a diffusion on a compact ultrametric space. The second part of the book is an appendix to the book Compactifications of Symmetric Spaces (Birkhauser) by Y. Guivarc'h and J. C. Taylor. This appendix consists of an article by each author and presents the contents of this book in a more algebraic way. L. Ji and J.-P. Anker simplifies some of their results on the asymptotics of the Green function that were used to compute Martin boundaries. And Taylor gives a self-contained account of Martin boundary theory for manifolds using the theory of second order strictly elliptic partial differential operators.

The heart of the book is the development of a short-time asymptotic expansion for the heat kernel. This is explained in detail and explicit examples of some advanced calculations are given. In addition some advanced methods and extensions, including path integrals, jump diffusion and others are presented. The book consists of four parts: Analysis, Geometry, Perturbations and Applications. The first part shortly reviews of some background material and gives an introduction to PDEs. The second part is devoted to a short introduction to various aspects of differential geometry that will be needed later. The third part and heart of the book presents a systematic development of effective methods for various approximation schemes for parabolic differential equations. The last part is devoted to applications in financial mathematics, in particular, stochastic differential equations. Although this book is intended for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in, it should also provide a useful reference for professional physicists, applied mathematicians as well as quantitative analysts with an interest in PDEs.

This book illustrates the wide range of research subjects developed by the Italian research group in harmonic analysis, originally started by Alessandro Figà-Talamanca, to whom it is dedicated in the occasion of his retirement. In particular, it outlines some of the impressive ramifications of the mathematical developments that began when Figà-Talamanca brought the study of harmonic analysis to Italy; the research group that he nurtured has now expanded to cover many areas. Therefore the book is addressed not only to experts in harmonic analysis, summability of Fourier series and singular integrals, but also in potential theory, symmetric spaces, analysis and partial differential equations on Riemannian manifolds, analysis on graphs, trees, buildings and discrete groups, Lie groups and Lie algebras, and even in far-reaching applications as for instance cellular automata and signal processing (low-discrepancy sampling, Gaussian noise).

At the end of the summer 1989, an international conference on stochastic analysis and related topics was held for the first time in Lisbon (Portu gal). This meeting was made possible with the help of INIC and JNICT, two organizations devoted to the encouragement of scientific research in Portugal. The meeting was interdiciplinary since mathematicians and mathematical physicists from around the world were invited to present their recent works involving probability theory, analysis, geometry and physics, a wide area of cross fertilization in recent years. Portuguese scientific research is expanding fast, these days, faster, some times, than the relevant academic structures. The years to come will be determinant for the orientation of those young Portuguese willing to take an active part in the international scientific community. Lisbon's summer 89 meeting should initiate a new Iberic tradition, attrac tive both for these researchers to be and, of course, for the selected guests. Judging by the quality of contributions collected here, it is not unrealistic to believe that a tradition of "southern randomness" may well be established.