This book, suitable for a one-year graduate course, gives a streamlined introduction to the theory of Dirichlet forms on general state spaces, including both the analytic and probabilistic aspects. It will appeal to graduate and advanced undergraduate students of mathematics interested in probability and its interface with analysis and physics as well as to mathematical physicists.

0 Introduction.- I Functional Analytic Background.- 1 Resolvents, semigroups, generators.- 2 Coercive bilinear forms.- 3 Closability.- 4 Contraction properties.- 5 Notes/References.- II Examples.- 1 Starting point: operator.- 2 Starting point: bilinear form - finite dimensional case.- 3 Starting point: bilinear form - infinite dimensional case.- 4 Starting point: semigroup of kernels.- 5 Starting point: resolvent of kernels.- 6 Notes/References.- III Analytic Potential Theory of Dirichlet Forms.- 1 Excessive functions and balayage.- 2 ?-exceptional sets and capacities.- 3 Quasi-continuity.- 4 Notes/References.- IV Markov Processes and Dirichlet Forms.- 1 Basics on Markov processes.- 2 Association of right processes and Dirichlet forms.- 3 Quasi-regularity and the construction of the process.- 4 Examples of quasi-regular Dirichlet forms.- 5 Necessity of quasi-regularity and some probabilistic potential theory.- 6 One-to-one correspondences.- 7 Notes/References.- V Characterization of Particular Processes.- 1 Local property and diffusions.- 2 A new capacity and Hunt processes.- 3 Notes/References.- VI Regularization.- 1 Local compactification.- 2 Consequences - the transfer method.- 3 Notes/References.- A Some Complements.- 1 Adjoint operators.- 2 The Banach/Alaoglu and Banach/Saks theorems.- 3 Supplement on Ray resolvents and right processes.