Galois Groups And Fundemental Groups

This book is devoted to an exposition of the theory of finite-dimensional Lie groups and Lie algebras, which is a beautiful and central topic in modern mathematics. At the end of the nineteenth century this theory came to life in the works of Sophus Lie. It had its origins in Lie's idea of applying Galois theory to differential equations and in Klein's "Erlanger Programm" of treat­ ing symmetry groups as the fundamental objects in geometry. Lie's approach to many problems of analysis and geometry was mainly local, that is, valid in local coordinate systems only. At the beginning of the twentieth century E. Cartan and Weyl began a systematic treatment of the global aspects of Lie's theory. Since then this theory has ramified tremendously and now, as the twentieth century is coming to a close, its concepts and methods pervade mathematics and theoretical physics.

The first part of this book provides an elementary and self-contained exposition of classical Galois theory and its applications to questions of solvability of algebraic equations in explicit form. The second part describes a surprising analogy between the fundamental theorem of Galois theory and the classification of coverings over a topological space. The third part contains a geometric description of finite algebraic extensions of the field of meromorphic functions on a Riemann surface and provides an introduction to the topological Galois theory developed by the author.

This Lecture Notes volume is the fruit of two research-level summer schools jointly organized by the GTEM node at Lille University and the team of Galatasaray University (Istanbul): "Geometry and Arithmetic of Moduli Spaces of Coverings (2008)" and "Geometry and Arithmetic around Galois Theory (2009)". The volume focuses on geometric methods in Galois theory. The choice of the editors is to provide a complete and comprehensive account of modern points of view on Galois theory and related moduli problems, using stacks, gerbes and groupoids. It contains lecture notes on étale fundamental group and fundamental group scheme, and moduli stacks of curves and covers. Research articles complete the collection.