|
Second Fundamental Form
In differential geometry, the second fundamental form (or shape tensor) is a quadratic form on the tangent plane of a smooth surface in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, usually denoted by \mathrm (read "two"). Together with the first fundamental form, it serves to define extrinsic invariants of the surface, its principal curvatures. More generally, such a quadratic form is defined for a smooth immersed submanifold in a Riemannian manifold. Surface in R3 Motivation The second fundamental form of a parametric surface in was introduced and studied by Gauss. First suppose that the surface is the graph of a twice continuously differentiable function, , and that the plane is tangent to the surface at the origin. Then and its partial derivatives with respect to and vanish at (0,0). Therefore, the Taylor expansion of ''f'' at (0,0) starts with quadratic terms: : z=L\frac + Mxy + N\frac + \text\,, and the second fundamental form at the origin in the coordinates is the qu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Differential Geometry
Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cross Product
In mathematics, the cross product or vector product (occasionally directed area product, to emphasize its geometric significance) is a binary operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional oriented Euclidean vector space (named here E), and is denoted by the symbol \times. Given two linearly independent vectors and , the cross product, (read "a cross b"), is a vector that is perpendicular to both and , and thus normal to the plane containing them. It has many applications in mathematics, physics, engineering, and computer programming. It should not be confused with the dot product (projection product). If two vectors have the same direction or have the exact opposite direction from each other (that is, they are ''not'' linearly independent), or if either one has zero length, then their cross product is zero. More generally, the magnitude of the product equals the area of a parallelogram with the vectors for sides; in particular, the magnitude of the product of two per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orientability
In mathematics, orientability is a property of some topological spaces such as real vector spaces, Euclidean spaces, surfaces, and more generally manifolds that allows a consistent definition of "clockwise" and "counterclockwise". A space is orientable if such a consistent definition exists. In this case, there are two possible definitions, and a choice between them is an orientation of the space. Real vector spaces, Euclidean spaces, and spheres are orientable. A space is non-orientable if "clockwise" is changed into "counterclockwise" after running through some loops in it, and coming back to the starting point. This means that a geometric shape, such as , that moves continuously along such a loop is changed into its own mirror image . A Möbius strip is an example of a non-orientable space. Various equivalent formulations of orientability can be given, depending on the desired application and level of generality. Formulations applicable to general topological manifolds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torsion Tensor
In differential geometry, the notion of torsion is a manner of characterizing a twist or screw of a moving frame around a curve. The torsion of a curve, as it appears in the Frenet–Serret formulas, for instance, quantifies the twist of a curve about its tangent vector as the curve evolves (or rather the rotation of the Frenet–Serret frame about the tangent vector). In the geometry of surfaces, the ''geodesic torsion'' describes how a surface twists about a curve on the surface. The companion notion of curvature measures how moving frames "roll" along a curve "without twisting". More generally, on a differentiable manifold equipped with an affine connection (that is, a connection in the tangent bundle), torsion and curvature form the two fundamental invariants of the connection. In this context, torsion gives an intrinsic characterization of how tangent spaces twist about a curve when they are parallel transported; whereas curvature describes how the tangent spaces r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affine Connection
In differential geometry, an affine connection is a geometric object on a smooth manifold which ''connects'' nearby tangent spaces, so it permits tangent vector fields to be differentiated as if they were functions on the manifold with values in a fixed vector space. Connections are among the simplest methods of defining differentiation of the sections of vector bundles. The notion of an affine connection has its roots in 19th-century geometry and tensor calculus, but was not fully developed until the early 1920s, by Élie Cartan (as part of his general theory of connections) and Hermann Weyl (who used the notion as a part of his foundations for general relativity). The terminology is due to Cartan and has its origins in the identification of tangent spaces in Euclidean space by translation: the idea is that a choice of affine connection makes a manifold look infinitesimally like Euclidean space not just smoothly, but as an affine space. On any manifold of positive dimension ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Covariant Derivative
In mathematics, the covariant derivative is a way of specifying a derivative along tangent vectors of a manifold. Alternatively, the covariant derivative is a way of introducing and working with a connection on a manifold by means of a differential operator, to be contrasted with the approach given by a principal connection on the frame bundle – see affine connection. In the special case of a manifold isometrically embedded into a higher-dimensional Euclidean space, the covariant derivative can be viewed as the orthogonal projection of the Euclidean directional derivative onto the manifold's tangent space. In this case the Euclidean derivative is broken into two parts, the extrinsic normal component (dependent on the embedding) and the intrinsic covariant derivative component. The name is motivated by the importance of changes of coordinate in physics: the covariant derivative transforms covariantly under a general coordinate transformation, that is, linearly via the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shape Operator
In mathematics, the differential geometry of surfaces deals with the differential geometry of smooth surfaces with various additional structures, most often, a Riemannian metric. Surfaces have been extensively studied from various perspectives: ''extrinsically'', relating to their embedding in Euclidean space and ''intrinsically'', reflecting their properties determined solely by the distance within the surface as measured along curves on the surface. One of the fundamental concepts investigated is the Gaussian curvature, first studied in depth by Carl Friedrich Gauss, who showed that curvature was an intrinsic property of a surface, independent of its isometric embedding in Euclidean space. Surfaces naturally arise as graphs of functions of a pair of variables, and sometimes appear in parametric form or as loci associated to space curves. An important role in their study has been played by Lie groups (in the spirit of the Erlangen program), namely the symmetry groups of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metric Tensor
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a metric tensor (or simply metric) is an additional structure on a manifold (such as a surface) that allows defining distances and angles, just as the inner product on a Euclidean space allows defining distances and angles there. More precisely, a metric tensor at a point of is a bilinear form defined on the tangent space at (that is, a bilinear function that maps pairs of tangent vectors to real numbers), and a metric tensor on consists of a metric tensor at each point of that varies smoothly with . A metric tensor is ''positive-definite'' if for every nonzero vector . A manifold equipped with a positive-definite metric tensor is known as a Riemannian manifold. Such a metric tensor can be thought of as specifying ''infinitesimal'' distance on the manifold. On a Riemannian manifold , the length of a smooth curve between two points and can be defined by integration, and the distance between and can be defined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector-valued Differential Form
In mathematics, a vector-valued differential form on a manifold ''M'' is a differential form on ''M'' with values in a vector space ''V''. More generally, it is a differential form with values in some vector bundle ''E'' over ''M''. Ordinary differential forms can be viewed as R-valued differential forms. An important case of vector-valued differential forms are Lie algebra-valued forms. (A connection form is an example of such a form.) Definition Let ''M'' be a smooth manifold and ''E'' → ''M'' be a smooth vector bundle over ''M''. We denote the space of smooth sections of a bundle ''E'' by Γ(''E''). An ''E''-valued differential form of degree ''p'' is a smooth section of the tensor product bundle of ''E'' with Λ''p''(''T'' ∗''M''), the ''p''-th exterior power of the cotangent bundle of ''M''. The space of such forms is denoted by :\Omega^p(M,E) = \Gamma(E\otimes\Lambda^pT^*M). Because Γ is a strong monoidal functor, this can also be interpreted as :\Gamma(E\otimes\Lam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pushforward (differential)
In differential geometry, pushforward is a linear approximation of smooth maps on tangent spaces. Suppose that is a smooth map between smooth manifolds; then the differential of ''φ, d\varphi_x,'' at a point ''x'' is, in some sense, the best linear approximation of ''φ'' near ''x''. It can be viewed as a generalization of the total derivative of ordinary calculus. Explicitly, the differential is a linear map from the tangent space of ''M'' at ''x'' to the tangent space of ''N'' at ''φ''(''x''), d\varphi_x: T_xM \to T_N. Hence it can be used to ''push'' tangent vectors on ''M'' ''forward'' to tangent vectors on ''N''. The differential of a map ''φ'' is also called, by various authors, the derivative or total derivative of ''φ''. Motivation Let \varphi: U \to V be a smooth map from an open subset U of \R^m to an open subset V of \R^n. For any point x in U, the Jacobian of \varphi at x (with respect to the standard coordinates) is the matrix representation of the tota ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gauss Map
In differential geometry, the Gauss map (named after Carl F. Gauss) maps a surface in Euclidean space R3 to the unit sphere ''S''2. Namely, given a surface ''X'' lying in R3, the Gauss map is a continuous map ''N'': ''X'' → ''S''2 such that ''N''(''p'') is a unit vector orthogonal to ''X'' at ''p'', namely a normal vector to ''X'' at ''p''. The Gauss map can be defined (globally) if and only if the surface is orientable, in which case its degree is half the Euler characteristic. The Gauss map can always be defined locally (i.e. on a small piece of the surface). The Jacobian determinant of the Gauss map is equal to Gaussian curvature, and the differential of the Gauss map is called the shape operator. Gauss first wrote a draft on the topic in 1825 and published in 1827. There is also a Gauss map for a link, which computes linking number. Generalizations The Gauss map can be defined for hypersurfaces in R''n'' as a map from a hypersurface to the unit sphere ''S''''n'' & ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Einstein Notation
In mathematics, especially the usage of linear algebra in Mathematical physics, Einstein notation (also known as the Einstein summation convention or Einstein summation notation) is a notational convention that implies summation over a set of indexed terms in a formula, thus achieving brevity. As part of mathematics it is a notational subset of Ricci calculus; however, it is often used in physics applications that do not distinguish between tangent and cotangent spaces. It was introduced to physics by Albert Einstein in 1916. Introduction Statement of convention According to this convention, when an index variable appears twice in a single term and is not otherwise defined (see Free and bound variables), it implies summation of that term over all the values of the index. So where the indices can range over the set , : y = \sum_^3 c_i x^i = c_1 x^1 + c_2 x^2 + c_3 x^3 is simplified by the convention to: : y = c_i x^i The upper indices are not exponents but are in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
