Based on a course of lectures delivered at Oxford. Introduces the circle of ideas surrounding the heat-equation proof of the Atiyeh-Singer index theorem. Asymptotic expansions for the solutions of partial differential equations on compact manifolds are used to obtain topological information by means of a supersymmetric cancellation of eigenspaces. Analysis is worked out in the context of Dirac operators on Clifford bundles. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
