Download or read book Lectures on Chern-Weil Theory and Witten Deformations written by Weiping Zhang and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2001 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable book is based on the notes of a graduate course on differential geometry which the author gave at the Nankai Institute of Mathematics. It consists of two parts: the first part contains an introduction to the geometric theory of characteristic classes due to ShiingOCoshen Chern and Andr(r) Weil, as well as a proof of the GaussOCoBonnetOCoChern theorem based on the MathaiOCoQuillen construction of Thom forms; the second part presents analytic proofs of the Poincar(r)OCoHopf index formula, as well as the Morse inequalities based on deformations introduced by Edward Witten. Contents: ChernOCoWeil Theory for Characteristic Classes; Bott and DuistermaatOCoHeckman Formulas; GaussOCoBonnetOCoChern Theorem; Poincar(r)OCoHopf Index Formula: An Analytic Proof; Morse Inequalities: An Analytic Proof; ThomOCoSmale and Witten Complexes; Atiyah Theorem on Kervaire Semi-characteristic. Readership: Graduate students and researchers in differential geometry, topology and mathematical physics."