Barcelona93 Preface

Preface

In October 1992 a workshop organised by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas was held in Madrid.   The aim of the meeting was to stimulate the collaboration between different groups working in various fields of differential geometry and its applications to several areas of physics, as well as the participation of young researchers.   Some recent research works on these subjects were presented.

With the same purpose, a second "Fall Workshop" was held in Barcelona on September 20 and 21, 1993.   It was organised by the research group on differential geometry and its applications of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Telematics of theUniversitat Politècnica de Catalunya.   The program included ten one-hour talks on the above mentioned subjects.   We regret that some other interesting contributions could not be presented due to the limited available time.

This volume contains the summaries of the seminars given by the speakers.   We are grateful to them for their agreement to prepare a manuscript for these proceedings.   Their willingly attitude would have made this book much larger, if limits on their extension had not been placed.

As a technical remark, the authors sent their contributions via e-mail.   They were written in different T_EX dialects, and we have tried to adapt them to a uniform style.   Under this process, some minor changes may have occurred; we hope that they will not be significant.   (Well, at times an obvious misprint has also been corrected.)

The organisation of the workshop was financially supported by the following institutions:

• Direcció General de Recerca of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
• Vice-rectorat de recerca of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
• Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (Institut d'Estudis Catalans).

To all of them we must express our acknowledgement.

We are also indebted to the School of Telecommunications Engineering of Barcelona, which allowed us to use an appropriate room, and to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Telematics of our university, which encouraged and helped the realisation of the meeting.

At the time of writing these lines, another workshop is being prepared, now at the Universidad de Granada.   This is good news that we hope to be repeated in forthcoming years.

                                 X. Gràcia, M.C. Muñoz and N. Román 
                                 Organising Committee

                                 Barcelona, June 1994