Methods and applications of ultrametric and \(p\)-adic analysis: from wavelet theory to biophysics (Q2510776)

The paper under review is in fact a small monograph -- its original Russian version was published in book form (168 pages). It describes several topics from non-Archimedean analysis and mathematical physics, on which the author worked in 1997--2007. After an introduction (Section 1) with a description of the basic material in this area, the author introduces (Section 2) ``\(p\)-adic wavelets'', that is complex-valued wavelets on the field \(\mathbb Q_p\) of \(p\)-adic numbers, and describes their connections both with wavelets on \(\mathbb R\) and pseudo-differential operators including Vladimirov's fractional differentiation operator \(D^\alpha\). For further developments in this area (also after 2007) see \textit{S. Albeverio} et al. [Theory of \(p\)-adic distributions. Linear and nonlinear models. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series 370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2010; Zbl 1198.46001)]. The above operator \(D^\alpha\) is usually defined as a pseudodifferential operator (using the Fourier transform) and then extended to larger classes of functions using its representation as a hypersingular integral operator. The latter approach can be extended, as was shown by the author, to the study (Section 3) of much more general operators on ultrametric spaces. For this case, there is the notion of wavelets, theory of distributions, and a construction of the Gaussian ultrametric random field. In Section 4, the author gives a \(p\)-adic parametrization of Parisi matrices used in the replica method in statistical mechanics of disordered systems. A very promising physical application of \(p\)-adic methods is a \(p\)-adic model (Section 5) of inter-basin kinetics of complex systems including proteins; for the latter case see \textit{V. A. Avetisov} and \textit{A. Kh. Bikulov} [Proc. Steklov Inst. Math. 265, 75--81 (2009); translation from Tr. Mat. Inst. Steklova 265, 82--89 (2009; Zbl 1179.92007)]. Finally, in Section 6 a \(p\)-adic parametrization of of the genetic code is described. As a whole, this paper/book is an interesting source of information on the growing set of applications of non-Archimedean methods going beyond traditional branches of mathematics.