Infinite Dimensional Groups and Algebras in Quantum Physics

Book excerpt: The idea of writing this book appeared when I was working on some problems related to representations of physically relevant infinite - mensional groups of operators on physically relevant Hilbert spaces. The considerations were local, reducing the subject to dealing with representations of infinite-dimensional Lie algebras associated with the associated groups. There is a large number of specialized articles and books on parts of this subject, but to our suprise only a few represent the point of view given in this book. Moreover, none of the written material was self-contained. At present, the subject has not reached its final form and active research is still being undertaken. I present this subject of growing importance in a unified manner and by a fairly simple approach. I present a route by which students can absorb and understand the subject, only assuming that the reader is familliar with functional analysis, especially bounded and unbounded operators on Hilbert spaces. Moreover, I assume a little basic knowledge of algebras , Lie algebras, Lie groups, and manifolds- at least the definitions. The contents are presented in detail in the introduction in Chap. The manuscript of this book has been succesfully used by some advanced graduate students at Aarhus University, Denmark, in their "A-exame'. I thank them for comments.