Kazuya Kato

In 1970, Phillip Griffiths envisioned that points at infinity could be added to the classifying space D of polarized Hodge structures. In this book, Kazuya Kato and Sampei Usui realize this dream by creating a logarithmic Hodge theory. They use the logarithmic structures begun by Fontaine-Illusie to revive nilpotent orbits as a logarithmic Hodge structure. The book focuses on two principal topics. First, Kato and Usui construct the fine moduli space of polarized logarithmic Hodge structures with additional structures. Even for a Hermitian symmetric domain D, the present theory is a refinement of the toroidal compactifications by Mumford et al. For general D, fine moduli spaces may have slits caused by Griffiths transversality at the boundary and be no longer locally compact. Second, Kato and Usui construct eight enlargements of D and describe their relations by a fundamental diagram, where four of these enlargements live in the Hodge theoretic area and the other four live in the algebra-group theoretic area. These two areas are connected by a continuous map given by the SL(2)-orbit theorem of Cattani-Kaplan-Schmid. This diagram is used for the construction in the first topic.

This is the English translation of the original Japanese book. In this volume, 'Fermat's Dream', core theories in modern number theory are introduced. Developments are given in elliptic curves, $p$-adic numbers, the $\zeta$-function, and the number fields. This work presents an elegant perspective on the wonder of numbers. Number Theory 2 on class field theory, and Number Theory 3 on Iwasawa theory and the theory of modular forms, are forthcoming in the series.

This volume contains three long lecture series by J. L. Colliot-Thelene, Kazuya Kato and P. Vojta. Their topics are respectively the connection between algebraic K-theory and the torsion algebraic cycles on an algebraic variety, a new approach to Iwasawa theory for Hasse-Weil L-function, and the applications of arithemetic geometry to Diophantine approximation. They contain many new results at a very advanced level, but also surveys of the state of the art on the subject with complete, detailed profs and a lot of background. Hence they can be useful to readers with very different background and experience. CONTENTS: J. L. Colliot-Thelene: Cycles algebriques de torsion et K-theorie algebrique.- K. Kato: Lectures on the approach to Iwasawa theory for Hasse-Weil L-functions.- P. Vojta: Applications of arithmetic algebraic geometry to diophantine approximations.