Grothendieck

Grothendieck's duality theory for coherent cohomology is a fundamental tool in algebraic geometry and number theory, in areas ranging from the moduli of curves to the arithmetic theory of modular forms. Presented is a systematic overview of the entire theory, including many basic definitions and a detailed study of duality on curves, dualizing sheaves, and Grothendieck's residue symbol. Along the way proofs are given of some widely used foundational results which are not proven in existing treatments of the subject, such as the general base change compatibility of the trace map for proper Cohen-Macaulay morphisms (e.g., semistable curves). This should be of interest to mathematicians who have some familiarity with Grothendieck's work and wish to understand the details of this theory.

This book concentrates on the famous Grothendieck inequality and the continued search for the still unknown best possible value of the real and complex Grothendieck constant (an open problem since 1953). It describes in detail the state of the art in research on this fundamental inequality, including Krivine's recent contributions, and sheds light on related questions in mathematics, physics and computer science, particularly with respect to the foundations of quantum theory and quantum information theory. Unifying the real and complex cases as much as possible, the monograph introduces the reader to a rich collection of results in functional analysis and probability. In particular, it includes a detailed, self-contained analysis of the multivariate distribution of complex Gaussian random vectors. The notion of Completely Correlation Preserving (CCP) functions plays a particularly important role in the exposition.