Groups and symmetries. From finite groups to Lie groups. Transl. from the French by Stephanie Frank Singer. (Q998963)

Nature manifests itself through manifolds of diverse symmetries. Mathematically speaking, symmetry of a given object -- which is rather abstract, that is, independent of its nature, whether it is a geometric figure, some crystal, a hydrogen atom, or a molecule of benzene or fullerene, et cetera et cetera -- is such an operation or transformation that, being applied to this object, preserves it unchanged, invariant. A set of symmetries of a given object forms a group, a so called group of symmetry or group of transformations. This reminds of \textit{S. Lie}'s famous paper ``Ueber Gruppen von Transformationen'' written in 1874 [Gött. Nachr. 1874, 529-542 (1874; JFM 06.0093.01)]. This set of symmetries can be either finite or infinite, either discrete or continuous -- the latter is precisely the group that Sophus Lie referred to in his famous work. A group is an abstract term. Nevertheless, in our daily life groups are manifested via their representations. Yvette Kosmann-Schwarzbach, the author of the book under review, notices in the Introduction on p. xiii that in 1983, E. Wigner recalled ``As to representation theory: I realized that there must be such a theory but I had no knowledge of it. Dr. von Neumann to whom I presented the problem (and I presented to him the representations of the permutation groups of three and four elements because those I could establish by long hand calculations) gave me a reprint of the article of Frobenius and Schur [1906]. And that was wonderful!'' E. Wigner was talking about the paper by \textit{G. Frobenius} and \textit{I. Schur} ``Über die reellen Darstellungen der endlichen Gruppen'' which was published in 1906 [Berl. Ber. 1906, 186-208 (1906; JFM 37.0161.01)]. To expose in brief the representation theory of groups, from finite to Lie groups, constitutes the aim of this book, precisely, the textbook that is the revised edition of the previous book [Groupes et symétries. Groupes finis, groupes et algèbres de Lie, représentations. Palaiseau: Les Éditions de l'École Polytechnique (2005; Zbl 1132.20001)] and that originated from the course taught by the author for several years at the École Polytechnique to third-grade students in mathematics and physics. By content, the book consists of eight Chapters, each of which is supplied with exercises, and Section ``Problems and Solutions'' comprised of nine problems, including the problem of symmetry of fullerene. Chapter 1 contains general facts about groups, such as the necessary definitions, examples of finite and infinite groups, conjugacy classes, and group actions. Chapter 2 studies the representations of finite groups, whereas the next Chapter extends the representation theory to compact groups. Chapter 4 introduces the readers to Lie algebras and Lie groups. Representations of SU(2) and SO(3) are examined in Chapter 6 and the related spherical harmonics in Chapter 7. The last Chapter 8 deals with the irreducible representations of SU(3) which are directly related to the theory of quarks.