Frontiers in Number Theory, Physics, and Geometry II

Ten years after a 1989 meeting of number theorists and physicists at the Centre de Physique des Houches, a second event focused on the broader interface of number theory, geometry, and physics. This book is the first of two volumes resulting from that meeting. Broken into three parts, it covers Conformal Field Theories, Discrete Groups, and Renormalization, offering extended versions of the lecture courses and shorter texts on special topics.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: Conformal Field Theories, Discrete Groups, Renomalization. §The companion volume is subtitled: On Random Matrices, Zeta Functions and Dynamical Systems (Springer, 3-540-23189-7).