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Orbifold
In the mathematical disciplines of topology and geometry, an orbifold (for "orbit-manifold") is a generalization of a manifold. Roughly speaking, an orbifold is a topological space which is locally a finite group quotient of a Euclidean space. Definitions of orbifold have been given several times: by Ichirô Satake in the context of automorphic forms in the 1950s under the name ''V-manifold''; by William Thurston in the context of the geometry of 3-manifolds in the 1970s when he coined the name ''orbifold'', after a vote by his students; and by André Haefliger in the 1980s in the context of Mikhail Gromov's programme on CAT(k) spaces under the name ''orbihedron''. Historically, orbifolds arose first as surfaces with singular points long before they were formally defined. One of the first classical examples arose in the theory of modular forms with the action of the modular group \mathrm(2,\Z) on the upper half-plane: a version of the Riemann–Roch theorem holds after the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Thurston
William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds. Thurston was a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, University of California, Davis, and Cornell University. He was also a director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Early life and education William Thurston was born in Washington, D.C. to Margaret Thurston (), a seamstress, and Paul Thurston, an aeronautical engineer. William Thurston suffered from congenital strabismus as a child, causing issues with depth perception. His mother worked with him as a toddler to reconstruct three-dimensional images from two-dimensional ones. He received his bachelor's degree from New College in 1967 as part of its inaugural class. For his undergraduate thesis, he developed an intuitionist foundation for topology. Following this, he r ... [...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] |
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] |
Manifold With Boundary
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] |
Vertex Algebra
In mathematics, a vertex operator algebra (VOA) is an algebraic structure that plays an important role in two-dimensional conformal field theory and string theory. In addition to physical applications, vertex operator algebras have proven useful in purely mathematical contexts such as monstrous moonshine and the geometric Langlands correspondence. The related notion of vertex algebra was introduced by Richard Borcherds in 1986, motivated by a construction of an infinite-dimensional Lie algebra due to Igor Frenkel. In the course of this construction, one employs a Fock space that admits an action of vertex operators attached to lattice vectors. Borcherds formulated the notion of vertex algebra by axiomatizing the relations between the lattice vertex operators, producing an algebraic structure that allows one to construct new Lie algebras by following Frenkel's method. The notion of vertex operator algebra was introduced as a modification of the notion of vertex algebra, by Frenke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geometric Group Theory
Geometric group theory is an area in mathematics devoted to the study of finitely generated groups via exploring the connections between algebraic properties of such group (mathematics), groups and topology, topological and geometry, geometric properties of spaces on which these groups Group action (mathematics), act (that is, when the groups in question are realized as geometric symmetries or continuous transformations of some spaces). Another important idea in geometric group theory is to consider finitely generated groups themselves as geometric objects. This is usually done by studying the Cayley graphs of groups, which, in addition to the graph (discrete mathematics), graph structure, are endowed with the structure of a metric space, given by the so-called word metric. Geometric group theory, as a distinct area, is relatively new, and became a clearly identifiable branch of mathematics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Geometric group theory closely interacts with low-dimens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homeomorphism
In the mathematical field of topology, a homeomorphism, topological isomorphism, or bicontinuous function is a bijective and continuous function between topological spaces that has a continuous inverse function. Homeomorphisms are the isomorphisms in the category of topological spaces—that is, they are the mappings that preserve all the topological properties of a given space. Two spaces with a homeomorphism between them are called homeomorphic, and from a topological viewpoint they are the same. The word ''homeomorphism'' comes from the Greek words '' ὅμοιος'' (''homoios'') = similar or same and '' μορφή'' (''morphē'') = shape or form, introduced to mathematics by Henri Poincaré in 1895. Very roughly speaking, a topological space is a geometric object, and the homeomorphism is a continuous stretching and bending of the object into a new shape. Thus, a square and a circle are homeomorphic to each other, but a sphere and a torus are not. However, this desc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glossary Of Differential Geometry And Topology
This is a glossary of terms specific to differential geometry and differential topology. The following three glossaries are closely related: *Glossary of general topology *Glossary of algebraic topology *Glossary of Riemannian and metric geometry. See also: *List of differential geometry topics Words in ''italics'' denote a self-reference to this glossary. __NOTOC__ A Atlas (topology), Atlas B Bundle, see ''fiber bundle''. A basic element ''x'' with respect to an element ''y'' is an element of a cochain complex (C^*, d) (e.g., complex of differential forms on a manifold) that is closed: dx = 0 and the contraction of ''x'' by ''y'' is zero. C Chart (topology), Chart Cobordism Codimension. The codimension of a submanifold is the dimension of the ambient space minus the dimension of the submanifold. Connected sum Connection (mathematics), Connection Cotangent bundle, the vector bundle of cotangent spaces on a manifold. Cotangent space D Diffeomorphism. Given two Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finite Group
Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to: * Finite number (other) * Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number * Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marked for person and/or tense or aspect * "Finite", a song by Sara Groves from the album '' Invisible Empires'' See also * * Nonfinite (other) Nonfinite is the opposite of finite * a nonfinite verb is a verb that is not capable of serving as the main verb in an independent clause * a non-finite clause In linguistics, a non-finite clause is a dependent or embedded clause that represen ... {{disambiguation fr:Fini it:Finito ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isotropy Subgroup
In mathematics, a group action on a space is a group homomorphism of a given group into the group of transformations of the space. Similarly, a group action on a mathematical structure is a group homomorphism of a group into the automorphism group of the structure. It is said that the group ''acts'' on the space or structure. If a group acts on a structure, it will usually also act on objects built from that structure. For example, the group of Euclidean isometries acts on Euclidean space and also on the figures drawn in it. For example, it acts on the set of all triangles. Similarly, the group of symmetries of a polyhedron acts on the vertices, the edges, and the faces of the polyhedron. A group action on a vector space is called a representation of the group. In the case of a finite-dimensional vector space, it allows one to identify many groups with subgroups of , the group of the invertible matrices of dimension over a field . The symmetric group acts on any set with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diffeomorphism
In mathematics, a diffeomorphism is an isomorphism of smooth manifolds. It is an invertible function that maps one differentiable manifold to another such that both the function and its inverse are differentiable. Definition Given two manifolds M and N, a differentiable map f \colon M \rightarrow N is called a diffeomorphism if it is a bijection and its inverse f^ \colon N \rightarrow M is differentiable as well. If these functions are r times continuously differentiable, f is called a C^r-diffeomorphism. Two manifolds M and N are diffeomorphic (usually denoted M \simeq N) if there is a diffeomorphism f from M to N. They are C^r-diffeomorphic if there is an r times continuously differentiable bijective map between them whose inverse is also r times continuously differentiable. Diffeomorphisms of subsets of manifolds Given a subset X of a manifold M and a subset Y of a manifold N, a function f:X\to Y is said to be smooth if for all p in X there is a neighbor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group (mathematics)
In mathematics, a group is a Set (mathematics), set and an Binary operation, operation that combines any two Element (mathematics), elements of the set to produce a third element of the set, in such a way that the operation is Associative property, associative, an identity element exists and every element has an Inverse element, inverse. These three axioms hold for Number#Main classification, number systems and many other mathematical structures. For example, the integers together with the addition operation form a group. The concept of a group and the axioms that define it were elaborated for handling, in a unified way, essential structural properties of very different mathematical entities such as numbers, geometric shapes and polynomial roots. Because the concept of groups is ubiquitous in numerous areas both within and outside mathematics, some authors consider it as a central organizing principle of contemporary mathematics. In geometry groups arise naturally in the study of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
