Timeline for Why are integrals over cycles called periods?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21, 2010 at 2:59 | answer | added | John Stillwell | timeline score: 12 | |
| May 20, 2010 at 19:19 | answer | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | timeline score: 6 | |
| May 20, 2010 at 16:27 | comment | added | Dan Piponi | And I always thought it was because the integrals you use to compute the periods of an elliptic curve were the same as those used to compute the period of a pendulum, after some suitable change of variable. | |
| May 20, 2010 at 15:58 | answer | added | Emerton | timeline score: 13 | |
| May 20, 2010 at 15:56 | comment | added | Andrea Ferretti | Long story short, it comes from the case where your variety is an elliptic curve. A function with source an elliptic curve can be thought as a doubly periodic function on $\mathbb{C}$, and the periods become... well, periods. That is, the segment joining the origin and a (fundamental) period is one of the generators of the first homology of the elliptic curve. | |
| May 20, 2010 at 14:32 | comment | added | j.c. | I thought it came from the theory of elliptic integrals / functions but I don't have a reference. | |
| May 20, 2010 at 14:31 | history | asked | Akela | CC BY-SA 2.5 |