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Casson-Walker Invariant
In 3-dimensional topology, a part of the mathematical field of geometric topology, the Casson invariant is an integer-valued invariant of oriented integral homology 3-spheres, introduced by Andrew Casson. Kevin Walker (1992) found an extension to rational homology 3-spheres, called the Casson–Walker invariant, and Christine Lescop (1995) extended the invariant to all closed oriented 3-manifolds. Definition A Casson invariant is a surjective map λ from oriented integral homology 3-spheres to Z satisfying the following properties: *λ(S3) = 0. *Let Σ be an integral homology 3-sphere. Then for any knot ''K'' and for any integer ''n'', the difference ::\lambda\left(\Sigma+\frac\cdot K\right)-\lambda\left(\Sigma+\frac\cdot K\right) :is independent of ''n''. Here \Sigma+\frac\cdot K denotes \frac Dehn surgery on Σ by ''K''. *For any boundary link ''K'' ∪ ''L'' in Σ the following expression is zero: ::\lambda\left(\Sigma+\frac\cdot K+\frac\cdot L\right) -\lambda\left(\Sigma+\ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3-dimensional Topology
In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a topological space that locally looks like a three-dimensional Euclidean space. A 3-manifold can be thought of as a possible shape of the universe. Just as a sphere looks like a plane (a tangent plane) to a small and close enough observer, all 3-manifolds look like our universe does to a small enough observer. This is made more precise in the definition below. Principles Definition A topological space M is a 3-manifold if it is a second-countable Hausdorff space and if every point in M has a neighbourhood that is homeomorphic to Euclidean 3-space. Mathematical theory of 3-manifolds The topological, piecewise-linear, and smooth categories are all equivalent in three dimensions, so little distinction is made in whether we are dealing with say, topological 3-manifolds, or smooth 3-manifolds. Phenomena in three dimensions can be strikingly different from phenomena in other dimensions, and so there is a prevalence of very specialized techniques tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fundamental Group
In the mathematics, mathematical field of algebraic topology, the fundamental group of a topological space is the group (mathematics), group of the equivalence classes under homotopy of the Loop (topology), 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 Group isomorphism, 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 (mathematics), surface), and some point in it, and all the loops both starting and ending at this point—path (topology), 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 alo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Atiyah
Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004. Early life and education Atiyah was born on 22 April 1929 in Hampstead, London, England, the son of Jean (née Levens) and Edward Atiyah. His mother was Scottish and his father was a Lebanese Orthodox Christian. He had two brothers, Patrick (deceased) and Joe, and a sister, Selma (deceased). Atiyah went to primary school at the Diocesan school in Khartoum, Sudan (1934–1941), and to secondary school at Victoria College in Cairo and Alexandria (1941–1945); the school was also attended by European nobility displaced by the Second World War and some future leaders of Arab nations. He returned to England and Manchester Grammar School for his HSC studies (1945–1947) and did his nati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Selman Akbulut
Selman Akbulut (born 1949) is a Turkish mathematician, specializing in research in topology, and geometry. He was a professor at Michigan State University until February 2020. Career In 1975, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley as a student of Robion Kirby. In topology, he has worked on handlebody theory, low-dimensional manifolds, symplectic topology, G2 manifolds. In the topology of real-algebraic sets, he and Henry C. King proved that every compact piecewise-linear manifold is a real-algebraic set; they discovered new topological invariants of real-algebraic sets. He was a visiting scholar several times at the Institute for Advanced Study (in 1975-76, 1980–81, 2002, and 2005). On February 14, 2020, Akbulut was removed from his tenured position at MSU by the Board of Trustees, after disputes over his teaching allotments and communications with colleagues. Contributions He has developed 4-dimensional handlebody techniques, settling conjectur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SU(3)
In mathematics, the special unitary group of degree , denoted , is the Lie group of unitary matrices with determinant 1. The matrices of the more general unitary group may have complex determinants with absolute value 1, rather than real 1 in the special case. The group operation is matrix multiplication. The special unitary group is a normal subgroup of the unitary group , consisting of all unitary matrices. As a compact classical group, is the group that preserves the standard inner product on \mathbb^n. It is itself a subgroup of the general linear group, \operatorname(n) \subset \operatorname(n) \subset \operatorname(n, \mathbb ). The groups find wide application in the Standard Model of particle physics, especially in the electroweak interaction and in quantum chromodynamics. The simplest case, , is the trivial group, having only a single element. The group is isomorphic to the group of quaternions of norm 1, and is thus diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere. Since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morse Function
In mathematics, specifically in differential topology, Morse theory enables one to analyze the topology of a manifold by studying differentiable functions on that manifold. According to the basic insights of Marston Morse, a typical differentiable function on a manifold will reflect the topology quite directly. Morse theory allows one to find CW structures and handle decompositions on manifolds and to obtain substantial information about their homology. Before Morse, Arthur Cayley and James Clerk Maxwell had developed some of the ideas of Morse theory in the context of topography. Morse originally applied his theory to geodesics ( critical points of the energy functional on the space of paths). These techniques were used in Raoul Bott's proof of his periodicity theorem. The analogue of Morse theory for complex manifolds is Picard–Lefschetz theory. Basic concepts To illustrate, consider a mountainous landscape surface M (more generally, a manifold). If f is the fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chern–Simons Theory
The Chern–Simons theory is a 3-dimensional topological quantum field theory of Schwarz type. It was discovered first by mathematical physicist Albert Schwarz. It is named after mathematicians Shiing-Shen Chern and James Harris Simons, who introduced the Chern–Simons 3-form. In the Chern–Simons theory, the action is proportional to the integral of the Chern–Simons 3-form. In condensed-matter physics, Chern–Simons theory describes composite fermions and the topological order in fractional quantum Hall effect states. In mathematics, it has been used to calculate knot invariants and three-manifold invariants such as the Jones polynomial. Particularly, Chern–Simons theory is specified by a choice of simple Lie group G known as the gauge group of the theory and also a number referred to as the ''level'' of the theory, which is a constant that multiplies the action. The action is gauge dependent, however the partition function of the quantum theory is well-defined whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SU(N)
In mathematics, the special unitary group of degree , denoted , is the Lie group of unitary matrices with determinant 1. The matrices of the more general unitary group may have complex determinants with absolute value 1, rather than real 1 in the special case. The group operation is matrix multiplication. The special unitary group is a normal subgroup of the unitary group , consisting of all unitary matrices. As a compact classical group, is the group that preserves the standard inner product on \mathbb^n. It is itself a subgroup of the general linear group, \operatorname(n) \subset \operatorname(n) \subset \operatorname(n, \mathbb ). The groups find wide application in the Standard Model of particle physics, especially in the electroweak interaction and in quantum chromodynamics. The simplest case, , is the trivial group, having only a single element. The group is isomorphic to the group of quaternions of norm 1, and is thus diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere. Since uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betti Number
In algebraic topology, the Betti numbers are used to distinguish topological spaces based on the connectivity of ''n''-dimensional simplicial complexes. For the most reasonable finite-dimensional spaces (such as compact manifolds, finite simplicial complexes or CW complexes), the sequence of Betti numbers is 0 from some point onward (Betti numbers vanish above the dimension of a space), and they are all finite. The ''n''th Betti number represents the rank of the ''n''th homology group, denoted ''H''''n'', which tells us the maximum number of cuts that can be made before separating a surface into two pieces or 0-cycles, 1-cycles, etc. For example, if H_n(X) \cong 0 then b_n(X) = 0, if H_n(X) \cong \mathbb then b_n(X) = 1, if H_n(X) \cong \mathbb \oplus \mathbb then b_n(X) = 2, if H_n(X) \cong \mathbb \oplus \mathbb\oplus \mathbb then b_n(X) = 3, etc. Note that only the ranks of infinite groups are considered, so for example if H_n(X) \cong \mathbb^k \oplus \mathbb/(2), where \mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3-manifolds
In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a topological space that locally looks like a three-dimensional Euclidean space. A 3-manifold can be thought of as a possible shape of the universe. Just as a sphere looks like a plane (a tangent plane) to a small and close enough observer, all 3-manifolds look like our universe does to a small enough observer. This is made more precise in the definition below. Principles Definition A topological space M is a 3-manifold if it is a second-countable Hausdorff space and if every point in M has a neighbourhood that is homeomorphic to Euclidean 3-space. Mathematical theory of 3-manifolds The topological, piecewise-linear, and smooth categories are all equivalent in three dimensions, so little distinction is made in whether we are dealing with say, topological 3-manifolds, or smooth 3-manifolds. Phenomena in three dimensions can be strikingly different from phenomena in other dimensions, and so there is a prevalence of very specialized techniques t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dedekind Sum
In mathematics, Dedekind sums are certain sums of products of a sawtooth function, and are given by a function ''D'' of three integer variables. Dedekind introduced them to express the functional equation of the Dedekind eta function. They have subsequently been much studied in number theory, and have occurred in some problems of topology. Dedekind sums have a large number of functional equations; this article lists only a small fraction of these. Dedekind sums were introduced by Richard Dedekind in a commentary on fragment XXVIII of Bernhard Riemann's collected papers. Definition Define the sawtooth function (\!( \, )\!) : \mathbb \rightarrow \mathbb as :(\!(x)\!)=\begin x-\lfloor x\rfloor - 1/2, &\mboxx\in\mathbb\setminus\mathbb;\\ 0,&\mboxx\in\mathbb. \end We then let :D: \mathbb^2\times (\mathbb-\)\to \mathbb be defined by :D(a,b;c)=\sum_^ \left(\!\!\left( \frac \right)\!\!\right) \! \left(\!\!\left( \frac \right)\!\!\right), the terms on the right being the Dedekind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyclic Cover
In algebraic topology and algebraic geometry, a cyclic cover or cyclic covering is a covering space for which the set of covering transformations forms a cyclic group. As with cyclic groups, there may be both finite and infinite cyclic covers. Cyclic covers have proven useful in the descriptions of knot topology and the algebraic geometry of Calabi–Yau manifolds. In classical algebraic geometry, cyclic covers are a tool used to create new objects from existing ones through, for example, a field extension by a root element. The powers of the root element form a cyclic group and provide the basis for a cyclic cover. A line bundle over a complex projective variety In algebraic geometry, a projective variety is an algebraic variety that is a closed subvariety of a projective space. That is, it is the zero-locus in \mathbb^n of some finite family of homogeneous polynomials that generate a prime ideal, the de ... with torsion index r may induce a cyclic Galois covering with cyclic g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
