The theory of Dirichlet forms has witnessed recently some very important
developments both in theoretical foundations and in applications
(stochasticprocesses, quantum field theory, composite materials, ...).
It was therefore felt timely to have on this subject a CIME school, in
which leading experts in the field would present both the basic
foundations of the theory and some of the recent applications. The six
courses covered the basic theory and applications to: - Stochastic
processes and potential theory (M. Fukushima and M. Roeckner) -
Regularity problems for solutions to elliptic equations in general
domains (E. Fabes and C. Kenig) - Hypercontractivity of semigroups,
logarithmic Sobolev inequalities and relation to statistical mechanics
(L. Gross and D. Stroock). The School had a constant and active
participation of young researchers, both from Italy and abroad