In this thesis, we consider some aspects of$noncommutative classical invariant theory$, i.e., noncommutative invariants of$the classical group SL(2, k)$. We develop a$symbolic method$for invariants and covariants, and we use the method to compute some invariant algebras. The subspace$Ĩ$_{d}^{m}of the noncommutative invariant algebra$Ĩ$_{$d$}consisting of homogeneous elements of degree$m$has the structure of a module over the$symmetric group S$_{$m$}. We find the explicit decomposition into irreducible modules. As a consequence, we obtain the$Hilbert series$of the commutative classical invariant algebras. The$Cayley—Sylvester theorem$and the$Hermite reciprocity law$are studied in some detail. We consider a new power series H($Ĩ$_{d},$t$) whose coefficients are the number of irreducible$S$_{$m$}-modules in the decomposition of$Ĩ$_{d}^{m}, and show that it is rational. Finally, we develop some analogues of all this for covariants.

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Surface conformal maps between genus-0 surfaces play important roles in applied mathematics and engineering, with applications in medical image analysis and computer graphics. Previous work (Gu and Yau in Commun Inf Syst 2(2):121–146, 2002) introduces a variational approach, where global conformal parameterization of genus-0 surfaces was addressed through minimizing the harmonic energy, with two weaknesses: its gradient descent iteration is slow, and its solutions contain undesired parameterization foldings when the underlying surface has long sharp features. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that significantly accelerates the harmonic energy minimization and a method that iteratively removes foldings by taking advantages of the weighted Laplace–Beltrami eigen-projection. Experimental results show that the proposed approaches compute genus-0 surface harmonic maps much faster than the existing algorithm in Gu and Yau (Commun Inf Syst 2(2):121–146, 2002) and the new results contain no foldings.

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Let$G$be a simple and simply-connected complex algebraic group,$P$⊂$G$a parabolic subgroup. We prove an unpublished result of D. Peterson which states that the quantum cohomology$QH$^{*}($G$/$P$) of a flag variety is, up to localization, a quotient of the homology$H$_{*}(Gr_{$G$}) of the affine Grassmannian Gr_{$G$}of$G$. As a consequence, all three-point genus-zero Gromov–Witten invariants of$G$/$P$are identified with homology Schubert structure constants of$H$_{*}(Gr_{$G$}), establishing the equivalence of the quantum and homology affine Schubert calculi.