This book presents in a systematic and almost self-contained way the striking analogy between classical function theory, in particular the value distribution theory of holomorphic curves in projective space, on the one hand, and important and beautiful properties of the Gauss map of minimal surfaces on the other hand. Both theories are developed in the text, including many results of recent research. The relations and analogies between them become completely clear. The book is written for interested graduate students and mathematicians, who want to become more familiar with this modern development in the two classical areas of mathematics, but also for those, who intend to do further research on minimal surfaces.

This book is the first monograph in the field of uniqueness theory of meromorphic functions dealing with conditions under which there is the unique function satisfying given hypotheses. Developed by R. Nevanlinna, a Finnish mathematician, early in the 1920's, research in the field has developed rapidly over the past three decades with a great deal of fruitful results. This book systematically summarizes the most important results in the field, including many of the authors' own previously unpublished results. In addition, useful skills and simple proofs are introduced. This book is suitable for higher level and graduate students who have a basic grounding in complex analysis, but will also appeal to researchers in mathematics.

The Nevanlinna theory of value distribution of meromorphic functions, one of the milestones of complex analysis during the last century, was c- ated to extend the classical results concerning the distribution of of entire functions to the more general setting of meromorphic functions. Later on, a similar reasoning has been applied to algebroid functions, subharmonic functions and meromorphic functions on Riemann surfaces as well as to - alytic functions of several complex variables, holomorphic and meromorphic mappings and to the theory of minimal surfaces. Moreover, several appli- tions of the theory have been exploited, including complex differential and functional equations, complex dynamics and Diophantine equations. The main emphasis of this collection is to direct attention to a number of recently developed novel ideas and generalizations that relate to the - velopment of value distribution theory and its applications. In particular, we mean a recent theory that replaces the conventional consideration of counting within a disc by an analysis of their geometric locations. Another such example is presented by the generalizations of the second main theorem to higher dimensional cases by using the jet theory. Moreover, s- ilar ideas apparently may be applied to several related areas as well, such as to partial differential equations and to differential geometry. Indeed, most of these applications go back to the problem of analyzing zeros of certain complex or real functions, meaning in fact to investigate level sets or level surfaces.

For a given meromorphic function I(z) and an arbitrary value a, Nevanlinna's value distribution theory, which can be derived from the well known Poisson-Jensen for mula, deals with relationships between the growth of the function and quantitative estimations of the roots of the equation: 1 (z) - a = O. In the 1920s as an application of the celebrated Nevanlinna's value distribution theory of meromorphic functions, R. Nevanlinna [188] himself proved that for two nonconstant meromorphic func tions I, 9 and five distinctive values ai (i = 1,2,3,4,5) in the extended plane, if 1 1- (ai) = g-l(ai) 1M (ignoring multiplicities) for i = 1,2,3,4,5, then 1 = g. Fur 1 thermore, if 1- (ai) = g-l(ai) CM (counting multiplicities) for i = 1,2,3 and 4, then 1 = L(g), where L denotes a suitable Mobius transformation. Then in the 19708, F. Gross and C. C. Yang started to study the similar but more general questions of two functions that share sets of values. For instance, they proved that if 1 and 9 are two nonconstant entire functions and 8 , 82 and 83 are three distinctive finite sets such 1 1 that 1- (8 ) = g-1(8 ) CM for i = 1,2,3, then 1 = g.

A vast literature has grown up around the value distribution theory of meromorphic functions, synthesized by Rolf Nevanlinna in the 1920s and singled out by Hermann Weyl as one of the greatest mathematical achievements of this century. The multidimensional aspect, involving the distribution of inverse images of analytic sets under holomorphic mappings of complex manifolds, has not been fully treated in the literature. This volume thus provides a valuable introduction to multivariate value distribution theory and a survey of some of its results, rich in relations to both algebraic and differential geometry and surely one of the most important branches of the modern geometric theory of functions of a complex variable. Since the book begins with preparatory material from the contemporary geometric theory of functions, only a familiarity with the elements of multidimensional complex analysis is necessary background to understand the topic. After proving the two main theorems of value distribution theory, the author goes on to investigate further the theory of holomorphic curves and to provide generalizations and applications of the main theorems, focusing chiefly on the work of Soviet mathematicians.

The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive account of higher dimensional Nevanlinna theory and its relations with Diophantine approximation theory for graduate students and interested researchers. This book with nine chapters systematically describes Nevanlinna theory of meromorphic maps between algebraic varieties or complex spaces, building up from the classical theory of meromorphic functions on the complex plane with full proofs in Chap. 1 to the current state of research. Chapter 2 presents the First Main Theorem for coherent ideal sheaves in a very general form. With the preparation of plurisubharmonic functions, how the theory to be generalized in a higher dimension is described. In Chap. 3 the Second Main Theorem for differentiably non-degenerate meromorphic maps by Griffiths and others is proved as a prototype of higher dimensional Nevanlinna theory. Establishing such a Second Main Theorem for entire curves in general complex algebraic varieties is a wide-open problem. In Chap. 4, the Cartan-Nochka Second Main Theorem in the linear projective case and the Logarithmic Bloch-Ochiai Theorem in the case of general algebraic varieties are proved. Then the theory of entire curves in semi-abelian varieties, including the Second Main Theorem of Noguchi-Winkelmann-Yamanoi, is dealt with in full details in Chap. 6. For that purpose Chap. 5 is devoted to the notion of semi-abelian varieties. The result leads to a number of applications. With these results, the Kobayashi hyperbolicity problems are discussed in Chap. 7. In the last two chapters Diophantine approximation theory is dealt with from the viewpoint of higher dimensional Nevanlinna theory, and the Lang-Vojta conjecture is confirmed in some cases. In Chap. 8 the theory over function fields is discussed. Finally, in Chap. 9, the theorems of Roth, Schmidt, Faltings, and Vojta over number fields are presented and formulated in view of Nevanlinna theory with results motivated by those in Chaps. 4, 6, and 7.