Tel Aviv Topology Conference: Rothenberg Festschrif : International Conference on Topology, June 1-5, 1998 Tel Aviv (Contemporary Mathematics)

This volume presents the proceedings of the Tel Aviv International Topology Conference held during the Special Topology Program at Tel Aviv University. The book is dedicated to Professor Mel Rothenberg on the occasion of his 65th birthday. His contributions to topology are well known---from the early work on triangulations to numerous papers on transformation groups and on geometric and analytic aspects of torsion theory. Current research related to those contributions are reported in this book. Coverage is included on the following topics: vanishing theorems for the Dirac operator, the theory of Reidemeister torsion (including infinite dimensional flat bundles), Nobikov-Shubin invariants of manifolds, topology of group actions, Lusternik-Schnirelman theory for closed 1-forms, finite type invariants of links and 3-manifolds, equivariant cobordisms, equivariant orientations and Thom isomorphisms, and more. Vanishing Theorems On Covering Manifolds / Maxim Braverman -- The Sunada Method / Robert Brooks -- Relative Torsion For Homotopy Triangulations / D. Burghelea, L. Friedlander And T. Kappeler -- Non-linear Similarity And Linear Similarity Are Equivariant Below Dimension 6 / Sylvain Cappell And Julius Shaneson -- Massey Products And Critical Points / Michael Farber -- Absolute Torsion / Michael Farber And Vladimir Turaev -- Signatures Of Links And Finite Type Invariants Of Cyclic Branched Covers / Stavros Garoufalidis -- The Relation Between Compact And Non-compact Equivariant Cobordisms / Viktor L. Ginzburg, Victor L. Guillemin And Yael Karshon -- Volume Of Riemannian Manifolds, Geometric Inequalities, And Homotopy Theory / Mikhail G. Katz And Alexander I. Suciu -- Pure Braids, A New Subgroup Of The Mapping Class Group And Finite-type Invariants Of 3-manifolds / Jerome Levine -- Novikov-shubin Invariants For Arbitrary Group Actions And Their Positivity / Wolfgang Luck, Holger Reich And Thomas Schick -- Differential Operator Endomorphisms Of An Euler-lagrange Complex / Martin Markl And Steve Shnider -- K-theory Of Twisted Group C-algebras And Positive Scalar Curvature / Varghese Mathai -- Equivariant Orientations And Thom Isomorphisms / J. P. May -- Algorithmic Aspects Of Homeomorphism Problems / Alexander Nabutovsky And Shmuel Weinberger -- The G-signature Theorem Revisited / Jonathan Rosenberg -- A Sequence Of Connections And A Characterization Of Kahler Manifolds / Mikhail Shubin -- New Invariants For Surfaces / Mina Teicher -- The Arithmeticity Of Groups Of Automorphisms Of Spaces / Georgia Triantafillou -- Nonlinear Averaging, Embeddings, And Group Actions / Shmuel Weinberger -- Higher [rho]-invariants / Shmuel Weinberger. M. Farber, W. Lück, S. Weinberger, Editors. Dedication To Mel Rothenberg On The Occasion Of His 65th Birthday. Includes Bibliographical References. Contains topics that include vanishing theorems for the Dirac operator, the theory of Reidemeister torsion (including infinite dimensional flat bundles), Nobikov-Shubin invariants of manifolds, topology of group actions, Lusternik-Schnirelman theory for closed 1-forms, finite type invariants of links and 3-manifolds, and equivariant cobordisms.