Table of Contents

Preface; List of symbols; 1. Examples; 2. KP flows and the Sato-Segal-Wilson Grassmannian; 3. The KP hierarchy and its standard reductions; 4. Infinite dimensional Grassmannians; 5. Fermionic representation of tau functions and Baker functions; 6. Finite dimensional reductions of the infinite Grassmannian and their associated tau functions; 7. Other related integrable hierarchies; 8. Convolution symmetries; 9. Isomonodromic deformations; 10. Integrable integral operators and dual isomonodromic deformations; 11. Random matrix models I. Partition functions and correlators; 12. Random matrix models II. Level spacings; 13. Generating functions for characters, intersection indices and Brézin-Hikami matrix models; 14. Generating functions for weighted Hurwitz numbers: enumeration of branched coverings; Appendix A. Integer partitions; Appendix B. Determinantal and Pfaffian identities; Appendix C. Grassmann manifolds and flag manifolds; Appendix D. Symmetric functions; Appendix E. Finite dimensional fermions: Clifford and Grassmann algebras, spinors, isotropic Grassmannians; Appendix F. Riemann surfaces, holomorphic differentials and theta functions; Appendix G. Orthogonal polynomials; Appendix H. Solutions of selected exercises; References; Alphabetical Index.

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A thorough introduction to tau functions, from the basics through to the most recent results, with applications in mathematical physics.

About the Author

John Harnad is Director of the Mathematical Physics Laboratory at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, and Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University in Montréal. Over his career he has made numerous contributions to a variety of fields of mathematical physics, including: gauge field theory, integrable systems, random matrices, isomonodromic deformations and generating functions for graphical enumeration. He was the recipient of the 2006 Canadian Association of Physicists Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. Ferenc Balogh is Professor of Mathematics at John Abbott College, Montréal. He completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics under the supervision of John Harnad, with whom he has since collaborated on a number of research projects. His doctoral thesis was awarded the 2011 Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Prize in Engineering and Natural Sciences.