The Breadth of Symplectic and Poisson Geometry: Festschrift in Honor of Alan Weinstein (Progress in Mathematics (232))

One of the world’s foremost geometers, Alan Weinstein has made deep contributions to symplectic and differential geometry, Lie theory, mechanics, and related fields. Written in his honor, the invited papers in this volume reflect the active and vibrant research in these areas and are a tribute to Weinstein’s ongoing influence. The well-recognized contributors to this text cover a broad range of topics: Induction and reduction for systems with symmetry, symplectic geometry and topology, geometric quantization, the Weinstein Conjecture, Poisson algebra and geometry, Dirac structures, deformations for Lie group actions, Kähler geometry of moduli spaces, theory and applications of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics and dynamics, symplectic and Poisson groupoids, and quantum representations. Intended for graduate students and working mathematicians in symplectic and Poisson geometry as well as mechanics, this text is a distillation of prominent research and an indication of the future trends and directions in geometry, mechanics, and mathematical physics. Contributors: H. Bursztyn, M. Cahen, M. Crainic, J. J. Duistermaat, K. Ehlers, S. Evens, V. L. Ginzburg, A. B. Givental, S. Gutt, D. D. Holm, J. Huebschmann, L. Jeffrey, F. Kirwan, M. Kogan, J. Koiller, Y. Kosmann-Schwarzbach, B. Kostant, C. Laurent-Gengoux, J-H. Lu, J. E. Marsden, K. C. H. Mackenzie, Y. Maeda, C-M. Marle, T. E. Milanov, N. Miyazaki, R. Montgomery, Y-G. Oh, J-P. Ortega, H. Omori, T. S. Ratiu, P. M. Rios, L. Schwachhöfer, J. Stasheff, I. Vaisman, A. Yoshioka, P. Xu, and S. Zelditch. One of the world's foremost geometers, Alan Weinstein has made deep contributions to symplectic and differential geometry, Lie theory, mechanics, and related fields. Written in his honor, the invited papers in this volume reflect the active and vibrant research in these areas and are a tribute to Weinstein's ongoing influence. The well-recognized contributors to this text cover a broad range of topics: Induction and reduction for systems with symmetry, symplectic geometry and topology, geometric quantization, the Weinstein Conjecture, Poisson algebra and geometry, Dirac structures, deformations for Lie group actions, Kähler geometry of moduli spaces, theory and applications of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics and dynamics, symplectic and Poisson groupoids, and quantum representations. This paper builds on three ideas pursued by Alan Weinstein in some of his many fundamental contributions to Poisson geometry: First, Lie algebroids play a prominent role in the study of Poisson manifolds [8, 30]; second, Poisson maps can be regarded as generalized momentum maps for actions of symplectic groupoids [25, 31]; third, Poisson structures on manifolds are particular examples of more general objects called Dirac structures [12, 13, 28]. Cover topics including induction and reduction for systems with symmetry, symplectic geometry and topology, geometric quantization, the Weinstein Conjecture, and Poisson algebra and geometry. This book also covers Dirac structures, deformations for Lie group actions, and Kahler geometry of moduli spaces.