Preface Contents Chapter 1: Riemannian Manifolds 1.1 Manifolds and Differentiable Manifolds 1.2 Tangent Spaces 1.3 Submanifolds 1.4 Riemannian Metrics 1.5 Existence of Geodesics on Compact Manifolds 1.6 The Heat Flow and the Existence of Geodesics 1.7 Existence of Geodesics on Complete Manifolds Exercises for Chapter 1 Chapter 2: Lie Groups and Vector Bundles 2.1 Vector Bundles 2.2 Integral Curves of Vector Fields. Lie Algebras 2.3 Lie Groups 2.4 Spin Structures Exercises for Chapter 2 Chapter 3: The Laplace Operator and Harmonic Differential Forms 3.1 The Laplace Operator on Functions 3.2 The Spectrum of the Laplace Operator 3.3 The Laplace Operator on Forms 3.4 Representing Cohomology Classes by Harmonic Forms 3.5 Generalizations 3.6 The Heat Flow and Harmonic Forms Exercises for Chapter 3 Chapter 4: Connections and Curvature 4.1 Connections in Vector Bundles 4.2 Metric Connections. The Yang–MillsFunctional 4.3 The Levi-Civita Connection 4.4 Connections for Spin Structures and the Dirac Operator 4.5 The Bochner Method 4.6 Eigenvalue Estimates by the Method of Li–Yau 4.7 The Geometry of Submanifolds 4.8 Minimal Submanifolds Exercises for Chapter 4 Chapter 5: Geodesics and Jacobi Fields 5.1 First and second Variation of Arc Length and Energy 5.2 Jacobi Fields 5.3 Conjugate Points and Distance Minimizing Geodesics 5.4 Riemannian Manifolds of Constant Curvature 5.5 The Rauch Comparison Theorems and Other Jacobi Field Estimates 5.6 Geometric Applications of Jacobi Field Estimates 5.7 Approximate Fundamental Solutions and Representation Formulas 5.8 The Geometry of Manifolds of Nonpositive Sectional Curvature Exercises for Chapter 5 A Short Survey on Curvature and Topology Chapter 6: Symmetric Spaces and Kähler Manifolds 6.1 Complex Projective Space 6.2 Kähler Manifolds 6.3 The Geometry of Symmetric Spaces 6.4 Some Results about the Structure of Symmetric Spaces 6.5 The Space Sl(n, R)/SO(n, R) 6.6 Symmetric Spaces of Noncompact Type Exercises for Chapter 6 Chapter 7: Morse Theory and Floer Homology 7.1 Preliminaries: Aims of Morse Theory 7.2 The Palais–Smale Condition, Existence of Saddle Points 7.3 Local Analysis 7.4 Limits of Trajectories of the Gradient Flow 7.5 Floer Condition, Transversality and Z2-Cohomology 7.6 Orientations and Z-homology 7.7 Homotopies 7.8 Graph flows 7.9 Orientations 7.10 The Morse Inequalities 7.11 The Palais–Smale Condition and the Existence of Closed Geodesics Exercises for Chapter 7 Chapter 8: Harmonic Maps between Riemannian Manifolds 8.1 Definitions 8.2 Formulas for Harmonic Maps. The Bochner Technique 8.3 The Energy Integral and Weakly Harmonic Maps 8.4 Higher Regularity 8.5 Existence of Harmonic Maps for Nonpositive Curvature 8.6 Regularity of Harmonic Maps for Nonpositive Curvature 8.7 Harmonic Map Uniqueness and Applications Exercises for Chapter 8 Chapter 9: Harmonic Maps from Riemann Surfaces 9.1 Two-dimensional Harmonic Mappings 9.2 The Existence of Harmonic Maps in Two Dimensions 9.3 Regularity Results Exercises for Chapter 9 Chapter 10: Variational Problems from Quantum Field Theory 10.1 The Ginzburg–Landau Functional 10.2 The Seiberg–Witten Functional 10.3 Dirac-harmonic Maps Exercises for Chapter 10 A Linear Elliptic Partial Differential Equations A.1 Sobolev Spaces A.2 Linear Elliptic Equations A.3 Linear Parabolic Equations B Fundamental Groups and Covering Spaces Bibliography Index