Elementary Differential Geometry Oneill

The aim of this book is to provide a short but complete exposition of the logical structure of classical relativistic electrodynamics written in the language and spirit of coordinate-free differential geometry. The intended audience is primarily mathematicians who want a bare-bones account of the foundations of electrodynamics written in language with which they are familiar and secondarily physicists who may be curious how their old friend looks in the new clothes of the differential-geometric viewpoint which in recent years has become an important language and tool for theoretical physics.

Conformal invariants (conformally invariant tensors, conformally covariant differential operators, conformal holonomy groups etc.) are of central significance in differential geometry and physics. Well-known examples of such operators are the Yamabe-, the Paneitz-, the Dirac- and the twistor operator. The aim of the seminar was to present the basic ideas and some of the recent developments around Q-curvature and conformal holonomy. The part on Q-curvature discusses its origin, its relevance in geometry, spectral theory and physics. Here the influence of ideas which have their origin in the AdS/CFT-correspondence becomes visible.

Differential Geometry is a wide field. We have chosen to concentrate upon certain aspects that are appropriate for an introduction to the subject; we have not attempted an encyclopedic treatment.
Book II deals with more advanced material than Book I and is aimed at the graduate level. Chapter 4 deals with additional topics in Riemannian geometry. Properties of real analytic curves given by a single ODE and of surfaces given by a pair of ODEs are studied, and the volume of geodesic balls is treated. An introduction to both holomorphic and Kähler geometry is given. In Chapter 5, the basic properties of de Rham cohomology are discussed, the Hodge Decomposition Theorem, Poincaré duality, and the Künneth formula are proved, and a brief introduction to the theory of characteristic classes is given.