Joël Bellaïche studied at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and obtained his PhD at the university of Orsay. He is now professor at Brandeis University. His research interest are in Number Theory, Automorphic Forms, Galois Representations, L-functions, and Algebraic Geometry.

• - Introduction.- Part I The ‘Eigen’ Construction.- Eigenalgebras.- Eigenvarieties.- Part II Modular Symbols and L-Functions.- Abstract Modular Symbols.- Classical Modular Symbols, Modular Forms, L-functions.- Rigid Analytic Modular Symbols and p-Adic L-functions.- Part III The Eigencurve and its p-Adic L-Functions.- The Eigencurve of Modular Symbols.- p-Adic L-Functions on the Eigencurve.- The Adjoint p-Adic L-Function and the Ramification Locus of the Eigencurve.- Solutions and Hints to Exercises.

“This book represented hope. If I read it carefully, maybe I would finally get to know what they were all talking about, and gain some real insight into what are obviously very important and influential ideas. While I cannot claim to be an expert by now, my first skim through, skipping all the exercises, has provided me with a satisfying foundation, and I found that revisited passages responded well to a second reading to consolidate what I had learned.” (Neil P. Dummigan, Mathematical Reviews, May, 2023)“Complete proofs (or detailed references) of all statements are given and many exercises (with their solutions or hints) are included, hence the book may be addressed to graduate students working in this beautiful area of number theory and arithmetic algebraic geometry. This is a welcome addition to the literature in a field.” (Andrzej Dąbrowski, zbMATH 1493.11002, 2022)