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Essential Manifold
In geometry, an essential manifold is a special type of closed manifold. The notion was first introduced explicitly by Mikhail Gromov. Definition A closed manifold ''M'' is called essential if its fundamental class 'M''defines a nonzero element in the homology of its fundamental group , or more precisely in the homology of the corresponding Eilenberg–MacLane space ''K''(, 1), via the natural homomorphism :H_n(M)\to H_n(K(\pi,1)), where ''n'' is the dimension of ''M''. Here the fundamental class is taken in homology with integer coefficients if the manifold is orientable, and in coefficients modulo 2, otherwise. Examples *All closed surfaces (i.e. 2-dimensional manifolds) are essential with the exception of the 2-sphere ''S2''. *Real projective space ''RPn'' is essential since the inclusion *:\mathbb^n \to \mathbb^\infty :is injective in homology, where ::\mathbb^\infty = K(\mathbb_2, 1) :is the Eilenberg–MacLane space of the finite cyclic group of order 2. *All compa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a ''geometer''. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts. During the 19th century several discoveries enlarged dramatically the scope of geometry. One of the oldest such discoveries is Carl Friedrich Gauss' ("remarkable theorem") that asserts roughly that the Gaussian curvature of a surface is independent from any specific embedding in a Euclidean space. This implies that surfaces can be studied ''intrinsically'', that is, as stand-alone spaces, and has been expanded into the theory of manifolds and Riemannian geometry. Later in the 19th century, it appeared that geometries ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Gromov (mathematician)
Mikhael Leonidovich Gromov (also Mikhail Gromov, Michael Gromov or Misha Gromov; russian: link=no, Михаи́л Леони́дович Гро́мов; born 23 December 1943) is a Russian-French mathematician known for his work in geometry, analysis and group theory. He is a permanent member of IHÉS in France and a professor of mathematics at New York University. Gromov has won several prizes, including the Abel Prize in 2009 "for his revolutionary contributions to geometry". Biography Mikhail Gromov was born on 23 December 1943 in Boksitogorsk, Soviet Union. His Russian father Leonid Gromov and his Jewish mother Lea Rabinovitz were pathologists. His mother was the cousin of World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, as well as of the mathematician Isaak Moiseevich Rabinovich. Gromov was born during World War II, and his mother, who worked as a medical doctor in the Soviet Army, had to leave the front line in order to give birth to him. When Gromov was nine years old, his mother ... [...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] |
Fundamental Class
In mathematics, the fundamental class is a homology class 'M''associated to a connected orientable compact manifold of dimension ''n'', which corresponds to the generator of the homology group H_n(M,\partial M;\mathbf)\cong\mathbf . The fundamental class can be thought of as the orientation of the top-dimensional simplices of a suitable triangulation of the manifold.In past years mathematics.... Definition Closed, orientable When ''M'' is a connected orientable closed manifold of dimension ''n'', the top homology group is infinite cyclic: H_n(M,\mathbf) \cong \mathbf, and an orientation is a choice of generator, a choice of isomorphism \mathbf \to H_n(M,\mathbf). The generator is called the fundamental class. If ''M'' is disconnected (but still orientable), a fundamental class is the direct sum of the fundamental classes for each connected component (corresponding to an orientation for each component). In relation with de Rham cohomology it represents ''integration over M''; na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homology (mathematics)
In mathematics, homology is a general way of associating a sequence of algebraic objects, such as abelian groups or modules, with other mathematical objects such as topological spaces. Homology groups were originally defined in algebraic topology. Similar constructions are available in a wide variety of other contexts, such as abstract algebra, groups, Lie algebras, Galois theory, and algebraic geometry. The original motivation for defining homology groups was the observation that two shapes can be distinguished by examining their holes. For instance, a circle is not a disk because the circle has a hole through it while the disk is solid, and the ordinary sphere is not a circle because the sphere encloses a two-dimensional hole while the circle encloses a one-dimensional hole. However, because a hole is "not there", it is not immediately obvious how to define a hole or how to distinguish different kinds of holes. Homology was originally a rigorous mathematical method for defi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fundamental Group
In the mathematical field of algebraic topology, the fundamental group of a topological space is the group of the equivalence classes under homotopy of the loops contained in the space. It records information about the basic shape, or holes, of the topological space. The fundamental group is the first and simplest homotopy group. The fundamental group is a homotopy invariant—topological spaces that are homotopy equivalent (or the stronger case of homeomorphic) have isomorphic fundamental groups. The fundamental group of a topological space X is denoted by \pi_1(X). Intuition Start with a space (for example, a surface), and some point in it, and all the loops both starting and ending at this point— paths that start at this point, wander around and eventually return to the starting point. Two loops can be combined in an obvious way: travel along the first loop, then along the second. Two loops are considered equivalent if one can be deformed into the other without breakin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eilenberg–MacLane Space
In mathematics, specifically algebraic topology, an Eilenberg–MacLane spaceSaunders Mac Lane originally spelt his name "MacLane" (without a space), and co-published the papers establishing the notion of Eilenberg–MacLane spaces under this name. (See e.g. ) In this context it is therefore conventional to write the name without a space. is a topological space with a single nontrivial homotopy group. Let ''G'' be a group and ''n'' a positive integer. A connected topological space ''X'' is called an Eilenberg–MacLane space of type K(G,n), if it has ''n''-th homotopy group \pi_n(X) isomorphic to ''G'' and all other homotopy groups trivial. If n > 1 then ''G'' must be abelian. Such a space exists, is a CW-complex, and is unique up to a weak homotopy equivalence, therefore any such space is often just called K(G,n). The name is derived from Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane, who introduced such spaces in the late 1940s. As such, an Eilenberg–MacLane space is a special k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspherical Manifold
In topology, a branch of mathematics, an aspherical space is a topological space with all homotopy groups \pi_n(X) equal to 0 when n>1. If one works with CW complexes, one can reformulate this condition: an aspherical CW complex is a CW complex whose universal cover is contractible. Indeed, contractibility of a universal cover is the same, by Whitehead's theorem, as asphericality of it. And it is an application of the exact sequence of a fibration that higher homotopy groups of a space and its universal cover are same. (By the same argument, if ''E'' is a path-connected space and p\colon E \to B is any covering map, then ''E'' is aspherical if and only if ''B'' is aspherical.) Each aspherical space ''X'' is, by definition, an Eilenberg–MacLane space of type K(G,1), where G = \pi_1(X) is the fundamental group of ''X''. Also directly from the definition, an aspherical space is a classifying space for its fundamental group (considered to be a topological group when endowed with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperbolic Manifold
In mathematics, a hyperbolic manifold is a space where every point looks locally like hyperbolic space of some dimension. They are especially studied in dimensions 2 and 3, where they are called hyperbolic surfaces and hyperbolic 3-manifolds, respectively. In these dimensions, they are important because most manifolds can be made into a hyperbolic manifold by a homeomorphism. This is a consequence of the uniformization theorem for surfaces and the geometrization theorem for 3-manifolds proved by Perelman. Rigorous Definition A hyperbolic n-manifold is a complete Riemannian n-manifold of constant sectional curvature -1. Every complete, connected, simply-connected manifold of constant negative curvature -1 is isometric to the real hyperbolic space \mathbb^n. As a result, the universal cover of any closed manifold M of constant negative curvature -1 is \mathbb^n. Thus, every such M can be written as \mathbb^n/\Gamma where \Gamma is a torsion-free discrete group of isometries ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lens Space
A lens space is an example of a topological space, considered in mathematics. The term often refers to a specific class of 3-manifolds, but in general can be defined for higher dimensions. In the 3-manifold case, a lens space can be visualized as the result of gluing two solid tori together by a homeomorphism of their boundaries. Often the 3-sphere and S^2 \times S^1, both of which can be obtained as above, are not counted as they are considered trivial special cases. The three-dimensional lens spaces L(p,q) were introduced by Heinrich Tietze in 1908. They were the first known examples of 3-manifolds which were not determined by their homology and fundamental group alone, and the simplest examples of closed manifolds whose homeomorphism type is not determined by their homotopy type. J. W. Alexander in 1919 showed that the lens spaces L(5;1) and L(5;2) were not homeomorphic even though they have isomorphic fundamental groups and the same homology, though they do not have th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connected Sum
In mathematics, specifically in topology, the operation of connected sum is a geometric modification on manifolds. Its effect is to join two given manifolds together near a chosen point on each. This construction plays a key role in the classification of closed surfaces. More generally, one can also join manifolds together along identical submanifolds; this generalization is often called the fiber sum. There is also a closely related notion of a connected sum on knots, called the knot sum or composition of knots. Connected sum at a point A connected sum of two ''m''-dimensional manifolds is a manifold formed by deleting a ball inside each manifold and gluing together the resulting boundary spheres. If both manifolds are oriented, there is a unique connected sum defined by having the gluing map reverse orientation. Although the construction uses the choice of the balls, the result is unique up to homeomorphism. One can also make this operation work in the smooth categor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gromov's Systolic Inequality For Essential Manifolds
In the mathematical field of Riemannian geometry, M. Gromov's systolic inequality bounds the length of the shortest non-contractible loop on a Riemannian manifold in terms of the volume of the manifold. Gromov's systolic inequality was proved in 1983;see it can be viewed as a generalisation, albeit non-optimal, of Loewner's torus inequality and Pu's inequality for the real projective plane. Technically, let ''M'' be an essential Riemannian manifold of dimension ''n''; denote by sys''π''1(''M'') the homotopy 1-systole of ''M'', that is, the least length of a non-contractible loop on ''M''. Then Gromov's inequality takes the form : \left(\operatorname_1(M)\right)^n \leq C_n \operatorname(M), where ''C''''n'' is a universal constant only depending on the dimension of ''M''. Essential manifolds A closed manifold is called ''essential'' if its fundamental class defines a nonzero element in the homology of its fundamental group, or more precisely in the homology of the corre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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