No label defined (Q3160255)

This book provides an almost self contained introduction to global calculus on differentiable manifolds. The presentation is a bit uncommon but natural, and mostly coordinate free. The language of sheaves is used consistently throughout the text. The guiding theme is differential operators. Elliptic theory is developed from the scratch leading to a number of beautiful applications. Most chapters are accompanied by a set of exercises. Some basic previous knowledge on differential manifolds and functional analysis would probably be helpful to the reader. Below is a brief chapter by chapter discussion of the material one can find in the book. Chapter~1 provides a quick introduction to sheaves. Then a smooth manifold is defined as a topological manifold together with a sheaf of continuous functions whose restriction to each chart coincides with the sheaf of smooth functions on open subsets of Euclidean space. This is followed by a brief discussion of (immersed) submanifolds, partitions of unity, and Lie group actions. In chapter 2 vector bundles are introduced and their relation with locally free sheaves is discussed. Then the tangent bundle, vector fields, their flow, and Frobenius' theorem are explained. Tensor fields, the Lie derivative and the deRham complex are treated. Finally, differential operators and their symbols are addressed. Chapter 3 is devoted to integration on manifolds and Stokes' theorem. Chapter 4 starts with an introduction to sheaf cohomology via injective (acyclic) resolutions. Then singular cohomology, Čech cohomology and deRham cohomology are defined. Moreover, it is proved that these cohomology theories coincide for manifolds. In chapter~5 linear connections on vector bundles, principal bundles, principal connections, associated bundles, associated connections and curvature are treated. Then Chern-Weil theory is introduced and the integrality of the first Chern class is proved. Additionally, one finds a proof of the Ambrose-Singer theorem. Chapter~6 deals with linear connections on the tangent bundle, their geodesics and the exponential mapping. Cartan connections are mentioned briefly. Chapter~7 is about manifolds with additional structures. First, oriented manifolds, (pseudo) Riemannian manifolds, almost symplectic and almost Hermitian manifolds are presented from the point of view of providing a reduction of the structure group. Then the question about the existence of compatible torsion free connections is pursued, leading to complex manifolds, symplectic manifolds, and the Levi-Cività connection for pseudo Riemannian manifolds. Then Riemannian geometry is studied in more detail, including sectional, Ricci, scalar and Weyl curvature, Riemannian density, the Hodge star operator, Clifford structures and Dirac operators. Chapter~8 contains basic material about local elliptic theory, including Schwartz space, Fourier transform, Fourier inversion formula, distributions, Sobolev theory, regularity of solutions and Rellich's theorem. Chapter~9 is about elliptic operators and complexes on compact manifolds. Hodge decomposition is discussed leading to an analytic proof for the finite dimensionality of cohomology groups, and Poincaré duality. The Riemann-Roch theorem is stated precisely (not proved) and a careful discussion in the case of surfaces is provided. The Bochner, Kodaira and Lichnerowicz vanishing theorems are derived from a general vanishing theorem for elliptic complexes. The book is accompanied by an appendix providing selected basic facts from multilinear algebra, homological algebra, topology, analysis and functional analysis.