Spectral Functions in Mathematics and Physics (Electronic book text)

Over the last several years, the author and his colleagues have developed new methods for the exact analysis of different spectral functions that are significant in physics. This text provides a comprehensive description of these techniques and their various applications. The author's approach allows for an exact treatment of zeta functions associated with the spectrum of some second order elliptic differential operators. Although much of the book is devoted to spectral analysis and geometry, it also describes some of the many applications in physics, particularly to heat asymptotics, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, the theory of partitions and Bose-Enstein condensation.