Almgren–Pitts Min-max Theory
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Almgren–Pitts Min-max Theory
In mathematics, the Almgren–Pitts min-max theory (named after Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. and his student Jon T. Pitts) is an analogue of Morse theory for hypersurfaces. The theory started with the efforts for generalizing George David Birkhoff's method for the construction of simple closed geodesics on the sphere, to allow the construction of embedding, embedded minimal surfaces in arbitrary 3-manifolds. It has played roles in the solutions to a number of conjectures in geometry and topology found by Almgren and Pitts themselves and also by other mathematicians, such as Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov, Mikhail Gromov, Richard Schoen, Shing-Tung Yau, Fernando Codá Marques, André Neves, Ian Agol, among others. Description and basic concepts The theory allows the construction of Embedding, embedded minimal hypersurfaces through variational methods. In his PhD thesis, Almgren Almgren Isomorphism Theorem, proved that the m-th homotopy group of the space of flat k-dimensional cycles on a ...
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Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ...
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Shing-Tung Yau
Shing-Tung Yau (; ; born April 4, 1949) is a Chinese-American mathematician. He is the director of the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University and professor emeritus at Harvard University. Until 2022, Yau was the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard, at which point he moved to Tsinghua. Yau was born in Shantou in 1949, moved to British Hong Kong at a young age, and then moved to the United States in 1969. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982, in recognition of his contributions to partial differential equations, the Calabi conjecture, the positive energy theorem, and the Monge–Ampère equation. Yau is considered one of the major contributors to the development of modern differential geometry and geometric analysis. The impact of Yau's work are also seen in the mathematical and physical fields of convex geometry, algebraic geometry, enumerative geometry, mirror symmetry, general relativity, and string theory, while his work h ...
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Willmore Conjecture
In differential geometry, the Willmore conjecture is a lower bound on the Willmore energy of a torus. It is named after the English mathematician Tom Willmore, who conjectured it in 1965. A proof by Fernando Codá Marques and André Neves was announced in 2012 and published in 2014. Willmore energy Let ''v'' : ''M'' → R3 be a smooth immersion of a compact, orientable surface. Giving ''M'' the Riemannian metric induced by ''v'', let ''H'' : ''M'' → R be the mean curvature (the arithmetic mean of the principal curvatures ''κ''1 and ''κ''2 at each point). In this notation, the ''Willmore energy'' ''W''(''M'') of ''M'' is given by : W(M) = \int_M H^2 \, dA. It is not hard to prove that the Willmore energy satisfies ''W''(''M'') ≥ 4''π'', with equality if and only if ''M'' is an embedded round sphere. Statement Calculation of ''W''(''M'') for a few examples suggests that there should be a better bound than ''W''( ...
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Leon Simon
Leon Melvyn Simon , born in 1945, is a Leroy P. Steele PrizeSee announcemen retrieved 15 September 2017. and Bôcher Memorial Prize, Bôcher Prize-winningSee . mathematician, known for deep contributions to the fields of geometric analysis, geometric measure theory, and partial differential equations. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Mathematics Department at Stanford University. Biography Academic career Leon Simon, born 6 July 1945, received his BSc from the University of Adelaide in 1967, and his PhD in 1971 from the same institution, under the direction of James H. Michael. His doctoral thesis was titled ''Interior Gradient Bounds for Non-Uniformly Elliptic Equations''. He was employed from 1968 to 1971 as a Tutor in Mathematics by the university. Simon has since held a variety of academic positions. He worked first at Flinders University as a lecturer, then at Australian National University as a professor, at the University of Melbourne, the University of Minn ...
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Varifold
In mathematics, a varifold is, loosely speaking, a measure-theoretic generalization of the concept of a differentiable manifold, by replacing differentiability requirements with those provided by rectifiable sets, while maintaining the general algebraic structure usually seen in differential geometry. Varifolds generalize the idea of a rectifiable current, and are studied in geometric measure theory. Historical note Varifolds were first introduced by Laurence Chisholm Young in , under the name "''generalized surfaces''". Frederick J. Almgren Jr. slightly modified the definition in his mimeographed notes and coined the name ''varifold'': he wanted to emphasize that these objects are substitutes for ordinary manifolds in problems of the calculus of variations. The modern approach to the theory was based on Almgren's notesThe first widely circulated exposition of Almgren's ideas is the book : however, the first systematic exposition of the theory is contained in the mimeographed n ...
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Dold–Thom Theorem
In algebraic topology, the Dold-Thom theorem states that the homotopy groups of the infinite symmetric product of a connected CW complex are the same as its reduced homology groups. The most common version of its proof consists of showing that the composition of the homotopy group functors with the infinite symmetric product defines a reduced homology theory. One of the main tools used in doing so are quasifibrations. The theorem has been generalised in various ways, for example by the Almgren isomorphism theorem. There are several other theorems constituting relations between homotopy and homology, for example the Hurewicz theorem. Another approach is given by stable homotopy theory. Thanks to the Freudenthal suspension theorem, one can see that the latter actually defines a homology theory. Nevertheless, none of these allow one to directly reduce homology to homotopy. This advantage of the Dold-Thom theorem makes it particularly interesting for algebraic geometry. The theorem ...
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Homology (mathematics)
In mathematics, the term homology, originally introduced in algebraic topology, has three primary, closely-related usages. The most direct usage of the term is to take the ''homology of a chain complex'', resulting in a sequence of Abelian group, abelian groups called ''homology groups.'' This operation, in turn, allows one to associate various named ''homologies'' or ''homology theories'' to various other types of mathematical objects. Lastly, since there are many homology theories for Topological space, topological spaces that produce the same answer, one also often speaks of the ''homology of a topological space''. (This latter notion of homology admits more intuitive descriptions for 1- or 2-dimensional topological spaces, and is sometimes referenced in popular mathematics.) There is also a related notion of the cohomology of a Cochain complexes, cochain complex, giving rise to various cohomology theories, in addition to the notion of the cohomology of a topological space. Ho ...
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Riemannian Manifold
In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold is a geometric space on which many geometric notions such as distance, angles, length, volume, and curvature are defined. Euclidean space, the N-sphere, n-sphere, hyperbolic space, and smooth surfaces in three-dimensional space, such as ellipsoids and paraboloids, are all examples of Riemannian manifold, manifolds. Riemannian manifolds are named after German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, who first conceptualized them. Formally, a Riemannian metric (or just a metric) on a smooth manifold is a choice of inner product for each tangent space of the manifold. A Riemannian manifold is a smooth manifold together with a Riemannian metric. The techniques of differential and integral calculus are used to pull geometric data out of the Riemannian metric. For example, integration leads to the Riemannian distance function, whereas differentiation is used to define curvature and parallel transport. Any smooth surface in three-dimensional Eucl ...
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Homotopy Group
In mathematics, homotopy groups are used in algebraic topology to classify topological spaces. The first and simplest homotopy group is the fundamental group, denoted \pi_1(X), which records information about loops in a space. Intuitively, homotopy groups record information about the basic shape, or '' holes'', of a topological space. To define the ''n''th homotopy group, the base-point-preserving maps from an ''n''-dimensional sphere (with base point) into a given space (with base point) are collected into equivalence classes, called homotopy classes. Two mappings are homotopic if one can be continuously deformed into the other. These homotopy classes form a group, called the ''n''th homotopy group, \pi_n(X), of the given space ''X'' with base point. Topological spaces with differing homotopy groups are never homeomorphic, but topological spaces that homeomorphic have the same homotopy groups. The notion of homotopy of paths was introduced by Camille Jordan. Introduc ...
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Almgren Isomorphism Theorem
Almgren isomorphism theorem is a result in geometric measure theory and algebraic topology about the topology of the space of flat cycles in a Riemannian manifold. The theorem plays a fundamental role in the Almgren–Pitts min-max theory as it establishes existence of topologically non-trivial families of cycles, which were used by Frederick J. Almgren Jr., Jon T. Pitts and others to prove existence of (possibly singular) minimal submanifolds in every Riemannian manifold. In the special case of the space of null-homologous codimension 1 cycles with mod 2 coefficients on a closed Riemannian manifold Almgren isomorphism theorem implies that it is weakly homotopy equivalent to the infinite real projective space. Statement of the theorem Let M be a Riemannian manifold. Almgren isomorphism theorem asserts that the m-th homotopy group of the space of flat k-dimensional cycles in M is isomorphic to the (m+k)-th dimensional homology group of M. This result is a generalization of the ...
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Embedding
In mathematics, an embedding (or imbedding) is one instance of some mathematical structure contained within another instance, such as a group (mathematics), group that is a subgroup. When some object X is said to be embedded in another object Y, the embedding is given by some Injective function, injective and structure-preserving map f:X\rightarrow Y. The precise meaning of "structure-preserving" depends on the kind of mathematical structure of which X and Y are instances. In the terminology of category theory, a structure-preserving map is called a morphism. The fact that a map f:X\rightarrow Y is an embedding is often indicated by the use of a "hooked arrow" (); thus: f : X \hookrightarrow Y. (On the other hand, this notation is sometimes reserved for inclusion maps.) Given X and Y, several different embeddings of X in Y may be possible. In many cases of interest there is a standard (or "canonical") embedding, like those of the natural numbers in the integers, the integers i ...
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Robert Osserman
Robert "Bob" Osserman (December 19, 1926 – November 30, 2011) was an American mathematician who worked in geometry. He is specially remembered for his work on the theory of minimal surfaces. Raised in Bronx, he went to Bronx High School of Science (diploma, 1942) and New York University. He earned a Ph.D. in 1955 from Harvard University with the thesis ''Contributions to the Problem of Type'' (on Riemann surfaces) supervised by Lars Ahlfors. He joined Stanford University in 1955. He joined the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in 1990. He worked on geometric function theory, differential geometry, the two integrated in a theory of minimal surfaces, isoperimetric inequality, and other issues in the areas of astronomy, geometry, cartography and complex function theory. Osserman was the head of mathematics at Office of Naval Research, a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Paris and Guggenheim Fellow at the University of Warwick. He edited numerous books and p ...
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