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Tangent Space
In mathematics, the tangent space of a manifold generalizes to higher dimensions the notion of '' tangent planes'' to surfaces in three dimensions and ''tangent lines'' to curves in two dimensions. In the context of physics the tangent space to a manifold at a point can be viewed as the space of possible velocities for a particle moving on the manifold. Informal description In differential geometry, one can attach to every point x of a differentiable manifold a ''tangent space''—a real vector space that intuitively contains the possible directions in which one can tangentially pass through x . The elements of the tangent space at x are called the ''tangent vectors'' at x . This is a generalization of the notion of a vector, based at a given initial point, in a Euclidean space. The dimension of the tangent space at every point of a connected manifold is the same as that of the manifold itself. For example, if the given manifold is a 2 -sphere, then one can picture the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Transport
In geometry, parallel transport (or parallel translation) is a way of transporting geometrical data along smooth curves in a manifold. If the manifold is equipped with an affine connection (a covariant derivative or connection (vector bundle), connection on the tangent bundle), then this connection allows one to transport vectors of the manifold along curves so that they stay ''parallel'' with respect to the connection. The parallel transport for a connection thus supplies a way of, in some sense, moving the local geometry of a manifold along a curve: that is, of ''connecting'' the geometries of nearby points. There may be many notions of parallel transport available, but a specification of one — one way of connecting up the geometries of points on a curve — is tantamount to providing a ''connection''. In fact, the usual notion of connection is the infinitesimal analog of parallel transport. Or, ''vice versa'', parallel transport is the local realization of a conne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equivalence Relation
In mathematics, an equivalence relation is a binary relation that is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. The equipollence relation between line segments in geometry is a common example of an equivalence relation. Each equivalence relation provides a partition of the underlying set into disjoint equivalence classes. Two elements of the given set are equivalent to each other if and only if they belong to the same equivalence class. Notation Various notations are used in the literature to denote that two elements a and b of a set are equivalent with respect to an equivalence relation R; the most common are "a \sim b" and "", which are used when R is implicit, and variations of "a \sim_R b", "", or "" to specify R explicitly. Non-equivalence may be written "" or "a \not\equiv b". Definition A binary relation \,\sim\, on a set X is said to be an equivalence relation, if and only if it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. That is, for all a, b, and c in X: * a \sim a ( ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Set
In mathematics, open sets are a generalization of open intervals in the real line. In a metric space (a set along with a distance defined between any two points), open sets are the sets that, with every point , contain all points that are sufficiently near to (that is, all points whose distance to is less than some value depending on ). More generally, one defines open sets as the members of a given collection of subsets of a given set, a collection that has the property of containing every union of its members, every finite intersection of its members, the empty set, and the whole set itself. A set in which such a collection is given is called a topological space, and the collection is called a topology. These conditions are very loose, and allow enormous flexibility in the choice of open sets. For example, ''every'' subset can be open (the discrete topology), or no set can be open except the space itself and the empty set (the indiscrete topology). In practice, however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manifold
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open subset of n-dimensional Euclidean space. One-dimensional manifolds include lines and circles, but not lemniscates. Two-dimensional manifolds are also called surfaces. Examples include the plane, the sphere, and the torus, and also the Klein bottle and real projective plane. The concept of a manifold is central to many parts of geometry and modern mathematical physics because it allows complicated structures to be described in terms of well-understood topological properties of simpler spaces. Manifolds naturally arise as solution sets of systems of equations and as graphs of functions. The concept has applications in computer-graphics given the need to associate pictures with coordinates (e.g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smoothness
In mathematical analysis, the smoothness of a function is a property measured by the number of continuous derivatives it has over some domain, called ''differentiability class''. At the very minimum, a function could be considered smooth if it is differentiable everywhere (hence continuous). At the other end, it might also possess derivatives of all orders in its domain, in which case it is said to be infinitely differentiable and referred to as a C-infinity function (or C^ function). Differentiability classes Differentiability class is a classification of functions according to the properties of their derivatives. It is a measure of the highest order of derivative that exists and is continuous for a function. Consider an open set U on the real line and a function f defined on U with real values. Let ''k'' be a non-negative integer. The function f is said to be of differentiability class ''C^k'' if the derivatives f',f'',\dots,f^ exist and are continuous on U. If f is k-differ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (geometry), point. This is the definition that appeared more than 2000 years ago in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'': "The [curved] line is […] the first species of quantity, which has only one dimension, namely length, without any width nor depth, and is nothing else than the flow or run of the point which […] will leave from its imaginary moving some vestige in length, exempt of any width." This definition of a curve has been formalized in modern mathematics as: ''A curve is the image (mathematics), image of an interval (mathematics), interval to a topological space by a continuous function''. In some contexts, the function that defines the curve is called a ''parametrization'', and the curve is a parametric curve. In this artic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tangent Bundle
In differential geometry, the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold M is a manifold TM which assembles all the tangent vectors in M . As a set, it is given by the disjoint unionThe disjoint union ensures that for any two points and of manifold the tangent spaces and have no common vector. This is graphically illustrated in the accompanying picture for tangent bundle of circle , see tangent bundle#Examples, Examples section: all tangents to a circle lie in the plane of the circle. In order to make them disjoint it is necessary to align them in a plane perpendicular to the plane of the circle. of the tangent spaces of M . That is, : \begin TM &= \bigsqcup_ T_xM \\ &= \bigcup_ \left\ \times T_xM \\ &= \bigcup_ \left\ \\ &= \left\ \end where T_x M denotes the tangent space to M at the point x . So, an element of TM can be thought of as a ordered pair, pair (x,v), where x is a point in M and v is a tangent vector to M at x . There i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (geometry), point. This is the definition that appeared more than 2000 years ago in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'': "The [curved] line is […] the first species of quantity, which has only one dimension, namely length, without any width nor depth, and is nothing else than the flow or run of the point which […] will leave from its imaginary moving some vestige in length, exempt of any width." This definition of a curve has been formalized in modern mathematics as: ''A curve is the image (mathematics), image of an interval (mathematics), interval to a topological space by a continuous function''. In some contexts, the function that defines the curve is called a ''parametrization'', and the curve is a parametric curve. In this artic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ordinary Differential Equation
In mathematics, an ordinary differential equation (ODE) is a differential equation whose unknown(s) consists of one (or more) function(s) of one variable and involves the derivatives of those functions. The term ''ordinary'' is used in contrast with the term partial differential equation which may be with respect to ''more than'' one independent variable. Differential equations A linear differential equation is a differential equation that is defined by a linear polynomial in the unknown function and its derivatives, that is an equation of the form :a_0(x)y +a_1(x)y' + a_2(x)y'' +\cdots +a_n(x)y^+b(x)=0, where , ..., and are arbitrary differentiable functions that do not need to be linear, and are the successive derivatives of the unknown function of the variable . Among ordinary differential equations, linear differential equations play a prominent role for several reasons. Most elementary and special functions that are encountered in physics and applied mathematics are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zariski Tangent Space
In algebraic geometry, the Zariski tangent space is a construction that defines a tangent space at a point ''P'' on an algebraic variety ''V'' (and more generally). It does not use differential calculus, being based directly on abstract algebra, and in the most concrete cases just the theory of a system of linear equations. Motivation For example, suppose given a plane curve ''C'' defined by a polynomial equation :''F''(''X,Y'') ''= 0'' and take ''P'' to be the origin (0,0). Erasing terms of higher order than 1 would produce a 'linearised' equation reading :''L''(''X,Y'') ''= 0'' in which all terms ''XaYb'' have been discarded if ''a + b > 1''. We have two cases: ''L'' may be 0, or it may be the equation of a line. In the first case the (Zariski) tangent space to ''C'' at (0,0) is the whole plane, considered as a two-dimensional affine space. In the second case, the tangent space is that line, considered as affine space. (The question of the origin comes up, when we take ''P' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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