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Conjugate Point
In differential geometry, conjugate points or focal points are, roughly, points that can almost be joined by a 1-parameter family of geodesics. For example, on a sphere, the north-pole and south-pole are connected by any meridian. Another viewpoint is that conjugate points tell when the geodesics fail to be length-minimizing. All geodesics are ''locally'' length-minimizing, but not globally. For example on a sphere, any geodesic passing through the north-pole can be extended to reach the south-pole, and hence any geodesic segment connecting the poles is not (uniquely) ''globally'' length minimizing. This tells us that any pair of antipodal points on the standard 2-sphere are conjugate points.Cheeger, Ebin. ''Comparison Theorems in Riemannian Geometry''. North-Holland Publishing Company, 1975, pp. 17-18. Definition Suppose ''p'' and ''q'' are points on a Riemannian manifold, and \gamma is a geodesic that connects ''p'' and ''q''. Then ''p'' and ''q'' are conjugate points along ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Differential Geometry
Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geodesic
In geometry, a geodesic () is a curve representing in some sense the shortest path ( arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection. It is a generalization of the notion of a " straight line". The noun '' geodesic'' and the adjective '' geodetic'' come from ''geodesy'', the science of measuring the size and shape of Earth, though many of the underlying principles can be applied to any ellipsoidal geometry. In the original sense, a geodesic was the shortest route between two points on the Earth's surface. For a spherical Earth, it is a segment of a great circle (see also great-circle distance). The term has since been generalized to more abstract mathematical spaces; for example, in graph theory, one might consider a geodesic between two vertices/nodes of a graph. In a Riemannian manifold or submanifold, geodesics are characterised by the property of having ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spherical Geometry
300px, A sphere with a spherical triangle on it. Spherical geometry is the geometry of the two-dimensional surface of a sphere. In this context the word "sphere" refers only to the 2-dimensional surface and other terms like "ball" or "solid sphere" are used for the surface together with its 3-dimensional interior. Long studied for its practical applications to navigation and astronomy, spherical geometry bears many similarities and relationships to, and important differences from, Euclidean plane geometry. The sphere has for the most part been studied as a part of 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry (often called solid geometry), the surface thought of as placed inside an ambient 3-d space. It can also be analyzed by "intrinsic" methods that only involve the surface itself, and do not refer to, or even assume the existence of, any surrounding space outside or inside the sphere. Because a sphere and a plane differ geometrically, (intrinsic) spherical geometry has some fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meridian (geography)
In geography and geodesy, a meridian is the locus connecting points of equal longitude, which is the angle (in degrees or other units) east or west of a given prime meridian (currently, the IERS Reference Meridian). In other words, it is a line of longitude. The position of a point along the meridian is given by that longitude and its latitude, measured in angular degrees north or south of the Equator. On a Mercator projection or on a Gall-Peters projection, each meridian is perpendicular to all circles of latitude. A meridian is half of a great circle on Earth's surface. The length of a meridian on a modern ellipsoid model of Earth ( WGS 84) has been estimated as . Pre-Greenwich The first prime meridian was set by Eratosthenes in 200 BCE. This prime meridian was used to provide measurement of the earth, but had many problems because of the lack of latitude measurement. Many years later around the 19th century there were still concerns of the prime meridian. Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riemannian Manifold
In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold or Riemannian space , so called after the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, is a real, smooth manifold ''M'' equipped with a positive-definite inner product ''g''''p'' on the tangent space ''T''''p''''M'' at each point ''p''. The family ''g''''p'' of inner products is called a Riemannian metric (or Riemannian metric tensor). Riemannian geometry is the study of Riemannian manifolds. A common convention is to take ''g'' to be smooth, which means that for any smooth coordinate chart on ''M'', the ''n''2 functions :g\left(\frac,\frac\right):U\to\mathbb are smooth functions. These functions are commonly designated as g_. With further restrictions on the g_, one could also consider Lipschitz Riemannian metrics or measurable Riemannian metrics, among many other possibilities. A Riemannian metric (tensor) makes it possible to define several geometric notions on a Riemannian manifold, such as angle at an intersection, lengt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacobi Field
In Riemannian geometry, a Jacobi field is a vector field along a geodesic \gamma in a Riemannian manifold describing the difference between the geodesic and an "infinitesimally close" geodesic. In other words, the Jacobi fields along a geodesic form the tangent space to the geodesic in the space of all geodesics. They are named after Carl Jacobi. Definitions and properties Jacobi fields can be obtained in the following way: Take a smooth one parameter family of geodesics \gamma_\tau with \gamma_0=\gamma, then :J(t)=\left.\frac\_ is a Jacobi field, and describes the behavior of the geodesics in an infinitesimal neighborhood of a given geodesic \gamma. A vector field ''J'' along a geodesic \gamma is said to be a Jacobi field if it satisfies the Jacobi equation: :\fracJ(t)+R(J(t),\dot\gamma(t))\dot\gamma(t)=0, where ''D'' denotes the covariant derivative with respect to the Levi-Civita connection, ''R'' the Riemann curvature tensor, \dot\gamma(t)=d\gamma(t)/dt the tangent vect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antipodal Point
In mathematics, antipodal points of a sphere are those diametrically opposite to each other (the specific qualities of such a definition are that a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the center of the sphere so forms a true diameter). This term applies to opposite points on a circle or any n-sphere. An antipodal point is sometimes called an antipode, a back-formation from the Greek loan word ''antipodes'', meaning "opposite (the) feet", as the true word singular is ''antipus''. Theory In mathematics, the concept of ''antipodal points'' is generalized to spheres of any dimension: two points on the sphere are antipodal if they are opposite ''through the centre''; for example, taking the centre as origin, they are points with related vectors v and −v. On a circle, such points are also called diametrically opposite. In other words, each line through the centre intersects the sphere in two points, one for each ray out from the centre, and these two poi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sectional Curvature
In Riemannian geometry, the sectional curvature is one of the ways to describe the curvature of Riemannian manifolds. The sectional curvature ''K''(σ''p'') depends on a two-dimensional linear subspace σ''p'' of the tangent space at a point ''p'' of the manifold. It can be defined geometrically as the Gaussian curvature of the surface which has the plane σ''p'' as a tangent plane at ''p'', obtained from geodesics which start at ''p'' in the directions of σ''p'' (in other words, the image of σ''p'' under the exponential map at ''p''). The sectional curvature is a real-valued function on the 2-Grassmannian bundle over the manifold. The sectional curvature determines the curvature tensor completely. Definition Given a Riemannian manifold and two linearly independent tangent vectors at the same point, ''u'' and ''v'', we can define :K(u,v)= Here ''R'' is the Riemann curvature tensor, defined here by the convention R(u,v)w=\nabla_u\nabla_vw-\nabla_v\n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cut Locus (Riemannian Manifold)
In Riemannian geometry, the cut locus of a point p in a manifold is roughly the set of all other points for which there are multiple minimizing geodesics connecting them from p, but it may contain additional points where the minimizing geodesic is unique, under certain circumstances. The distance function from ''p'' is a smooth function except at the point ''p'' itself and the cut locus. Definition Fix a point p in a complete Riemannian manifold (M,g), and consider the tangent space T_pM. It is a standard result that for sufficiently small v in T_p M, the curve defined by the Riemannian exponential map, \gamma(t) = \exp_p(tv) for t belonging to the interval ,1/math> is a minimizing geodesic, and is the unique minimizing geodesic connecting the two endpoints. Here \exp_p denotes the exponential map from p. The cut locus of p in the tangent space is defined to be the set of all vectors v in T_pM such that \gamma(t)=\exp_p(tv) is a minimizing geodesic for t \in ,1/math> but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
