Quote:This book is devoted to algebraic-geometric codes - the recently emerged area which combines algebraic geometry and coding theory. Its interdisciplinary nature - which makes it so beautiful - also leads to some difficulties for those who want to master it. We try to help all those coming in touch with this field, from students to specialists. starting from essentially first principles, the text leads the reader to the most recent published and unpublished results. We do not assume any initial knowledge either of coding theory or of algebraic geometry.
Algebraic-geometric codes open new rather exciting possibilities in coding theory and related topics (such as sphere packings). They also lead to a lot of deep and sometimes very difficult questions in algebraic geometry and number theory. We think that the next decade will witness many new interesting results, methods, and problems in this fruitful area. We hope this book to be of some use for those who choose this area for their own.
To make reading more interesting we have included a lot of exercises (with hints to those that do not look easy to us) and many open research problems.