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The series is devoted to the publication of monographs and high-level textbooks in mathematics, mathematical methods and their applications. Apart from covering important areas of current interest, a major aim is to make topics of an interdisciplinary nature accessible to the non-specialist. The works in this series are addressed to advanced students and researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics. In addition, it can serve as a guide for lectures and seminars on a graduate level. The series de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics was founded ca. 30 years ago by the late Professor Heinz Bauer and Professor Peter Gabriel with the aim to establish a series of monographs and textbooks of high standard, written by scholars with an international reputation presenting current fields of research in pure and applied mathematics.While the editorial board of the Studies has changed with the years, the aspirations of the Studies are unchanged. In times of rapid growth of mathematical knowledge carefully written monographs and textbooks written by experts are needed more than ever, not least to pave the way for the next generation of mathematicians. In this sense the editorial board and the publisher of the Studies are devoted to continue the Studies as a service to the mathematical community. Please submit any book proposals to Niels Jacob.

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Canonical systems occupy a central position in the spectral theory of second order differential operators. They may be used to realize arbitrary spectral data, and the classical operators such as Schrödinger, Jacobi, Dirac, and Sturm-Liouville equations can be written in this form. ´Spectral Theory of Canonical Systems´ offers a selfcontained and detailed introduction to this theory. Techniques to construct self-adjoint realizations in suitable Hilbert spaces, a modern treatment of de Branges spaces, and direct and inverse spectral problems are discussed. Contents Basic definitions Symmetric and self-adjoint relations Spectral representation Transfer matrices and de Branges spaces Inverse spectral theory Some applications The absolutely continuous spectrum

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Christian Remling, University of Oklahoma, USA.

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