These notes are based on the lectures I delivered at the German
Mathematical Society Seminar in Schloss Michkeln in DUsseldorf in June.
1986 on Hermitian-Einstein metrics for stable bundles and
Kahler-Einstein metrics. The purpose of these notes is to present to the
reader the state-of-the-art results in the simplest and the most
comprehensible form using (at least from my own subjective viewpoint)
the most natural approach. The presentation in these notes is reasonably
self-contained and prerequisi tes are kept to a minimum. Most steps in
the estimates are reduced as much as possible to the most basic
procedures such as integration by parts and the maximum principle. When
less basic procedures are used such as the Sobolev and Calderon-Zygmund
inequalities and the interior Schauder estimates. references are given
for the reader to look them up. A considerable amount of heuristic and
intuitive discussions are included to explain why certain steps are used
or certain notions introduced. The inclusion of such discussions makes
the style of the presentation at some places more conversational than
what is usually expected of rigorous mathemtical prese"ntations. For the
problems of Hermi tian-Einstein metrics for stable bundles and
Kahler-Einstein metrics one can use either the continuity method or the
heat equation method. These two methods are so very intimately related
that in many cases the relationship betwen them borders on equivalence.
What counts most is the a. priori estimates. The kind of scaffolding one
hangs the a.