TOPOLOGY AND PHYSICS

Since its birth in Poincare39s seminal 1894 Analysis Situs topology has become a cornerstone of mathematics As with all beautiful mathematical concepts topology inevitably resonating with that Wignerian principle of the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences finds its prominent role in physics From Chern–Simons theory to topological quantum field theory from knot invariants to Calabi–Yau compactification in string theory from spacetime topology in cosmology to the recent Nobel Prize winning work on topological insulators the interactions between topology and physics have been a triumph over the past few decadesIn this eponymous volume we are honoured to have contributions from an assembly of grand masters of the field guiding us with their worldrenowned expertise on the subject of the interplay between Topology and Physics Beginning with a preface by Chen Ning Yang on his recollections of the early days we proceed to a novel view of nuclei from the perspective of complex geometry by Sir Michael Atiyah and Nick Manton followed by an entree toward recent developments in twodimensional gravity and intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces by Robbert Dijkgraaf and Edward Witten a study of Majorana fermions and relations to the Braid group by Louis H Kauffman a pioneering investigation on arithmetic gauge theory by Minhyong Kim an anecdoteenriched review of singularity theorems in blackhole physics by Sir Roger Penrose an adventure beyond anyons by Zhenghan Wang an apercu on topological insulators from firstprinciple calculations by Haijun Zhang and ShouCheng Zhang finishing with synopsis on quantum information theory as one of the four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution by XiaoGang Wen We hope that this book will serve to inspire the research community