Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-316) and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
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Preface; Contents; 1. Introduction and Background; 2. Algebraic Tools for Topology; 3. Smooth Manifolds, Geometry; 4. Bundles, Geometry, Gauge Theory; 5. Gauge Theory and Moduli Space; 6. A Guide to the Classification of Manifolds; 7. Early Exotic Manifolds; 8. The First Results in Dimension Four; 9. Seiberg-Witten Theory: The Modern Approach; 10. Physical Implications; 11. From Differential Structures to Operator Algebras and Geometric Structures; Bibliography; Index.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
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The recent revolution in differential topology related to the discovery of non-standard (?exotic?) smoothness structures on topologically trivial manifolds such as R4 suggests many exciting opportunities for applications of potentially deep importance for the spacetime models of theoretical physics, especially general relativity. This rich panoply of new differentiable structures lies in the previously unexplored region between topology and geometry. Just as physical geometry was thought to be trivial before Einstein, physicists have continued to work under the tacit? but now shown to be inco.