Rationale for a Localization Formula

This chapter offers a rationale for a localization formula. It looks at the equivariant localization formula of Atiyah–Bott and Berline–Vergne. The equivariant localization formula of Atiyah–Bott and Berline–Vergne expresses, for a torus action, the integral of an equivariantly closed form over a compact oriented manifold as a finite sum over the fixed point set. The central idea is to express a closed form as an exact form away from finitely many points. Throughout his career, Raoul Bott exploited this idea to prove many different localization formulas. The chapter then considers circle actions with finitely many fixed points. It also studies the spherical blow-up.