Pontryagin Duality and the Structure of Locally Compact Abelian Groups

These lecture notes begin with an introduction to topological groups and proceed to a proof of the important Pontryagin-van Kampen duality theorem and a detailed exposition of the structure of locally compact abelian groups. Measure theory and Banach algebra are entirely avoided and only a small amount of group theory and topology is required.

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These lecture notes begin with an introduction to topological groups and proceed to a proof of the important Pontryagin-van Kampen duality theorem and a detailed exposition of the structure of locally compact abelian groups. Measure theory and Banach algebra are entirely avoided and only a small amount of group theory and topology is required, dealing with the subject in an elementary fashion. With about a hundred exercises for the student, it is a suitable text for first-year graduate courses.