Introduction to Quantum Groups 1 - 2007

From Quantum Mechanics to Quantum Groups The notion of 'quantization' commonly used in textbooks of quantum mechanics has to be specified in order to turn it into a defined mathematical operation. We discuss that on the trails of Weyl's phase space deformation, i.e. we introduce the Weyl-Moyal starproduct and the deformation of Poisson-manifolds. Generalizing from this, we understand, why Hopf-algebras are the most genuine way to apply 'quantization' to various other algebraic objects - and why this has direct physical applications.