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.

From the Introduction: This volume grew from a discussion by the editors on the difficulty of finding good thesis problems for graduate students in topology. Although at any given time we each had our own favorite problems, we acknowledged the need to offer students a wider selection from which to choose a topic peculiar to their interests. One of us remarked, 'Wouldn't it be nice to have a book of current unsolved problems always available to pull down from the shelf?' The other replied 'Why don't we simply produce such a book?' Two years later and not so simply, here is the resulting volume. The intent is to provide not only a source book for thesis-level problems but also a challenge to the best researchers in the field.

This book represents a novel approach to differential topology. Its main focus is to give a comprehensive introduction to the classification of manifolds, with special attention paid to the case of surfaces, for which the book provides a complete classification from many points of view: topological, smooth, constant curvature, complex, and conformal. Each chapter briefly revisits basic results usually known to graduate students from an alternative perspective, focusing on surfaces. We provide full proofs of some remarkable results that sometimes are missed in basic courses (e.g., the construction of triangulations on surfaces, the classification of surfaces, the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the degree-genus formula for complex plane curves, the existence of constant curvature metrics on conformal surfaces), and we give hints to questions about higher dimensional manifolds. Many examples and remarks are scattered through the book. Each chapter ends with an exhaustive collection of problems and a list of topics for further study. The book is primarily addressed to graduate students who did take standard introductory courses on algebraic topology, differential and Riemannian geometry, or algebraic geometry, but have not seen their deep interconnections, which permeate a modern approach to geometry and topology of manifolds.

Since at least the time of Poisson, mathematicians have pondered the notion of recurrence for differential equations. Solutions that exhibit recurrent behavior provide insight into the behavior of general solutions. In Recurrence and Topology, Alongi and Nelson provide a modern understanding of the subject, using the language and tools of dynamical systems and topology. Recurrence and Topology develops increasingly more general topological modes of recurrence for dynamical systems beginning with fixed points and concluding with chain recurrent points.

This text on contact topology is a comprehensive introduction to the subject, including recent striking applications in geometric and differential topology: Eliashberg's proof of Cerf's theorem via the classification of tight contact structures on the 3-sphere, and the Kronheimer-Mrowka proof of property P for knots via symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds. Starting with the basic differential topology of contact manifolds, all aspects of 3-dimensional contact manifolds are treated in this book. One notable feature is a detailed exposition of Eliashberg's classification of overtwisted contact structures. Later chapters also deal with higher-dimensional contact topology. Here the focus is on contact surgery, but other constructions of contact manifolds are described, such as open books or fibre connected sums. This book serves both as a self-contained introduction to the subject for advanced graduate students and as a reference for researchers.

Accessible, concise, and self-contained, this book offers an outstanding introduction to three related subjects: differential geometry, differential topology, and dynamical systems. Topics of special interest addressed in the book include Brouwer's fixed point theorem, Morse Theory, and the geodesic flow. Smooth manifolds, Riemannian metrics, affine connections, the curvature tensor, differential forms, and integration on manifolds provide the foundation for many applications in dynamical systems and mechanics. The authors also discuss the Gauss-Bonnet theorem and its implications in non-Euclidean geometry models. The differential topology aspect of the book centers on classical, transversality theory, Sard's theorem, intersection theory, and fixed-point theorems. The construction of the de Rham cohomology builds further arguments for the strong connection between the differential structure and the topological structure. It also furnishes some of the tools necessary for a complete understanding of the Morse theory. These discussions are followed by an introduction to the theory of hyperbolic systems, with emphasis on the quintessential role of the geodesic flow. The integration of geometric theory, topological theory, and concrete applications to dynamical systems set this book apart. With clean, clear prose and effective examples, the authors' intuitive approach creates a treatment that is comprehensible to relative beginners, yet rigorous enough for those with more background and experience in the field.

Algebraandtopology,thetwofundamentaldomainsofmathematics,playcomplem- tary roles. Topology studies continuity and convergence and provides a general framework to study the concept of a limit. Much of topology is devoted to handling in?nite sets and in?nity itself; the methods developed are qualitative and, in a certain sense, irrational. - gebra studies all kinds of operations and provides a basis for algorithms and calculations. Very often, the methods here are ?nitistic in nature. Because of this difference in nature, algebra and topology have a strong tendency to develop independently, not in direct contact with each other. However, in applications, in higher level domains of mathematics, such as functional analysis, dynamical systems, representation theory, and others, topology and algebra come in contact most naturally. Many of the most important objects of mathematics represent a blend of algebraic and of topologicalstructures. Topologicalfunctionspacesandlineartopologicalspacesingeneral, topological groups and topological ?elds, transformation groups, topological lattices are objects of this kind. Very often an algebraic structure and a topology come naturally together; this is the case when they are both determined by the nature of the elements of the set considered (a group of transformations is a typical example). The rules that describe the relationship between a topology and an algebraic operation are almost always transparentandnatural—theoperationhastobecontinuous,jointlyorseparately.