Frontiers in Number Theory, Physics, and Geometry I

The relation between mathematics and physics has a long history, in which the role of number theory and of other more abstract parts of mathematics has recently become more prominent. More than ten years after a first meeting in 1989 between number theorists and physicists at the Centre de Physique des Houches, a second 2-week event focused on the broader interface of number theory, geometry, and physics. This book is the result of that exciting meeting, and collects, in 2 volumes, extended versions of the lecture courses, followed by shorter texts on special topics, of eminent mathematicians and physicists. The present volume has three parts: Random matrices, Zeta functions, Dynamical systems. The companion volume is subtitled: On Conformal Field Theories, Discrete Groups and Renormalization and will be published in 2006 (Springer, 3-540-30307-3).