David R. (EDT) Morrison

Each summer the IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute Graduate Summer School gathers some of the best researchers and educators in a particular field to present diverse sets of lectures. This volume presents three weeks of lectures given at the Summer School on Quantum Field Theory, Super symmetry, and Enumerative Geometry, three very active research areas in mathematics and theoretical physics. With this volume, the Park City Mathematics Institute returns to the general topic of the first institute: the interplay between quantum field theory and mathematics. Two major themes at this institute were super symmetry and algebraic geometry, particularly enumerative geometry. The volume contains two lecture series on methods of enumerative geometry that have their roots in QFT. The first series covers the Schubert calculus and quantum cohomology. The second discusses methods from algebraic geometry for computing Gromov-Witten invariants. There are also three sets of lectures of a more introductory nature: an overview of classical field theory and super symmetry, an introduction to supermanifolds, and an introduction to general relativity. This volume is recommended for independent study and is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in geometry and physics.

This volume contains many of the lectures delivered at the AMS Summer Research Institute on Algebraic Geometry held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in July 1995. The aim of the conference was to provide a comprehensive view of the development of algebraic geometry in the past decade and to lay special emphasis on emerging new directions. The focus of the papers in these volumes is on expository surveys of important areas rather than on technical presentations of new results. These proceedings will be an indispensable reference and guide for researchers in algebraic geometry or nearby fields. It features a comprehensive coverage of developments over the past decade. It has emphasis on new directions and future developments. There are connections to related fields. It includes many expository survey papers.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Phillip Griffiths and his collaborators undertook a study of period mappings and variation of Hodge structure. The motivating problems, which centered on the understanding of algebraic varieties and the algebraic cycles on them, came from algebraic geometry. However, the techiques used were transcendental in nature, drawing heavily on both Lie theory and hermitian differential geometry. Promising approaches were formulated to fundamental questions in the theory of algebraic curves, moduli theory, and the deep interaction between Hodge theory and algebraic cyles. Rapid progress on many fronts was made in the 1970s and 1980s, including the discovery of important connections to other fields, including Nevanlinna theory, integrable systems, rational homotopy theory, harmonic mappings, intersection cohomology, and superstring theory. This volume contains thirteen papers presented during the Symposium on Complex Geometry and Lie Theory held in Sundance, Utah in May 1989. The symposium was designed to review twenty years of interaction between these two fields, concentrating on their links with Hodge theory. The organizers felt that the time was right to examine once again the large issues of understanding the moduli and cycle theory of higher-dimensional varieties, which was the starting point of these developments. The breadth of this collection of papers indicates the continuing growth and vitality of this area of research. Several survey papers are included, which should make the book a valuable resource for graduate students and other researchers who wish to learn about the field. With contributions from some of the field's top researchers, this volume testifies to the breadth and vitality of this area of research.