The Spectrum of the Almost Mathieu Operator

These notes are based on a series of six lectures, given during my stay at the CRC 701 in June/July 2008. The lecture series intended to give a survey of some of the results for the almost Mathieu operator that have been obtained since the early 1980's. Specifically, the metal-insulator transition is discussed in detail, along with its relation to the ten Martini problem via duality and reducibility.