In this book, non-spectral methods are presented and discussed that have been developed over the last two decades for the investigation of asymptotic behavior of one-parameter operator semigroups in Banach spaces. This concerns in particular Markov semigroups in L¹-spaces, motivated by applications to probability theory and dynamical systems. Recently many results on the asymptotic behaviour of Markov semigroups were extended to positive semigroups in Banach lattices with order-continuous norm, and to positive semigroups in non-commutative L¹-spaces. Related results, historical notes, exercises, and open problems accompany each chapter.

The book is directed to graduate students and researchers working in operator theory, particularly those interested in C₀-semigroups in classical and non-commutative L¹-spaces, in mean ergodic theory, and in dynamical systems.