The goal of this book is to provide a unified introduction to the study of algebraic surfaces and of holomorphic vector bundles on them. The author keeps the prerequisites to a good working knowledge of Hartshorne's book on algebraic geometry. The book will appeal to graduate students and researchers in the areas of algebraic geometry, gauge thoery, or 4-manifold topolgogy, as well as to physicists studying string theory.

One of the books primary assets is its method of presentation which makes the subject rather accessible The only prerequisite is a good working knowledge of elementary algebraic geometry Unified introduction to the study of algebraic surfaces and vector bundles Algebraic geometry is an active area of current research

Inhalt
1 Curves on a Surface.- Invariants of a surface.- Divisors on a surface.- Adjunction and arithmetic genus.- The Riemann-Roch formula.- Algebraic proof of the Hodge index theorem.- Ample and nef divisors.- Exercises.- 2 Coherent Sheaves.- What is a coherent sheaf?.- A rapid review of Chern classes for projective varieties.- Rank 2 bundles and sub-line bundles.- Elementary modifications.- Singularities of coherent sheaves.- Torsion free and reflexive sheaves.- Double covers.- Appendix: some commutative algebra.- Exercises.- 3 Birational Geometry.- Blowing up.- The Castelnuovo criterion and factorization of birational morphisms.- Minimal models.- More general contractions.- Exercises.- 4 Stability.- Definition of Mumford-Takemoto stability.- Examples for curves.- Some examples of stable bundles on ?2.- Gieseker stability.- Unstable and semistable sheaves.- Change of polarization.- The differential geometry of stable vector bundles.- Exercises.- 5 Some Examples of Surfaces.- Rational ruledsurfaces.- General ruled surfaces.- Linear systems of cubics.- An introduction toK3 surfaces.- Exercises.- 6 Vector Bundles over Ruled Surfaces.- Suitable ample divisors.- Ruled surfaces.- A brief introduction to local and global moduli.- A Zariski open subset of the moduli space.- Exercises.- 7 An Introduction to Elliptic Surfaces.- Singular fibers.- Singular fibers of elliptic fibrations.- Invariants and the canonical bundle formula.- Elliptic surfaces with a section and Weierstrass models.- More general elliptic surfaces.- The fundamental group.- Exercises.- 8 Vector Bundles over Elliptic Surfaces.- Stable bundles on singular curves.- Stable bundles of odd fiber degree over elliptic surfaces.- A Zariski open subset of the moduli space.- An overview of Donaldson invariants.- The 2-dimensional invariant.- Moduli spaces via extensions.- Vector bundles with trivial determinant.- Even fiber degree and multiple fibers.- Exercises.- 9 Bogomolov's Inequality and Applications.- Statement ofthe theorem.- The theorems of Bombieri and Reider.- The proof of Bogomolov's theorem.- Symmetric powers of vector bundles on curves.- Restriction theorems.- Appendix: Galois descent theory.- Exercises.- 10 Classification of Algebraic Surfaces and of Stable.- Bundles.- Outline of the classification of surfaces.- Proof of Castelnuovo's theorem.- The Albanese map.- Proofs of the classification theorems for surfaces.- The Castelnuovo-deFranchis theorem.- Classification of threefolds.- Classification of vector bundles.- Exercises.- References.