Spectral Problems In Geometry And Arithmetic

Spectral Problems in Geometry and Arithmetic

These are the proceedings of the NSF-CBMS Conference on "Spectral Problems in Geometry and Arithmetic" held at the University of Iowa. The principal speaker was Peter Sarnak, who has been a central contributor to developments in this field. The volume approaches the topic from the geometric, physical, and number theoretic points of view. The remarkable new connections among seemingly disparate mathematical and scientific disciplines have surprised even veterans of the physical mathematics renaissance forged by gauge theory in the 1970s. Numerical experiments show that the local spacing between zeros of the Riemann zeta function is modelled by spectral phenomena: the eigenvalue distributions of random matrix theory, in particular the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE). Related phenomena are from the point of view of differential geometry and global harmonic analysis. Elliptic operators on manifolds have (through zeta function regularization) functional determinants, which are related to functional integrals in quantum theory. The search for critical points of this determinant brings about extremely subtle and delicate sharp inequalities of exponential type. This indicates that zeta functions are spectral objects-and even physical objects. This volume demonstrates that zeta functions are also dynamic, chaotic, and more.

Spectral Geometry

Hilbert's Tenth Problem: Relations with Arithmetic and Algebraic Geometry

This book is the result of a meeting that took place at the University of Ghent (Belgium) on the relations between Hilbert's tenth problem, arithmetic, and algebraic geometry. Included are written articles detailing the lectures that were given as well as contributed papers on current topics of interest. The following areas are addressed: an historical overview of Hilbert's tenth problem, Hilbert's tenth problem for various rings and fields, model theory and local-global principles, including relations between model theory and algebraic groups and analytic geometry, conjectures in arithmetic geometry and the structure of diophantine sets, for example with Mazur's conjecture, Lang's conjecture, and Bücchi's problem, and results on the complexity of diophantine geometry, highlighting the relation to the theory of computation. The volume allows the reader to learn and compare different approaches (arithmetical, geometrical, topological, model-theoretical, and computational) to the general structural analysis of the set of solutions of polynomial equations. It would make a nice contribution to graduate and advanced graduate courses on logic, algebraic geometry, and number theory