Questions tagged [manifolds]
A manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, each point of an n-dimensional manifold has a neighbourhood that is homeomorphic to the Euclidean space of dimension n.
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Are there examples of non-orientable manifolds in nature?
Whilst browsing through Marcel Berger's book "A Panoramic View of Riemannian Geometry" and thinking about the Klein bottle, I came across the sentence:
"The unorientable surfaces are never discussed ...
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What do heat kernels have to do with the Riemann-Roch theorem and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem?
I know the following facts. (Don't assume I know much more than the following facts.)
The Atiyah-Singer index theorem generalizes both the Riemann-Roch theorem and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem.
The ...
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Which manifolds are homeomorphic to simplicial complexes?
This question is only motivated by curiosity; I don't know a lot about manifold topology.
Suppose $M$ is a compact topological manifold of dimension $n$. I'll assume $n$ is large, say $n\geq 4$. The ...
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Status of PL topology
I posted this question on math stackexchange but received no answers. Since I know there are more people knowledgeable in geometric and piecewise-linear (PL) topology here, I'm reposting the question. ...
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Is there a Whitney Embedding Theorem for non-smooth manifolds?
For smooth $n$-manifolds, we know that they can always be embedded in $\mathbb R^{2n}$ via a differentiable map. However, is there any corresponding theorem for the topological category? (i.e. Can ...
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What is the difference between holonomy and monodromy?
What is the difference between holonomy and monodromy?
And what is the simplest example in which one is trivial and the other is not?
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Connected sum of topological manifolds
A definition of the connected sum of two $n$-manifolds $M$ and $M'$ begins by considering two $n$-balls $B$ in $M$, $B'$ in $M'$, and glueing the varieties $M\setminus \mathring B$ and $M'\setminus \...
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Do rings of smooth functions differ from rings of continuous functions?
Let $M$, $N$ be connected nondiscrete compact smooth manifolds. Can the ring of continuous functions on $M$ be isomorphic to the ring of smooth functions on $N$?
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When is a submanifold of $\mathbf R^n$ given by global equations?
Let $M \subset \mathbf R^n$ be a (smooth) submanifold of dimension $d$. Under which conditions does there exist global equations defining $M$? By global equations I mean : does there exist a smooth ...
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Are there only countably many compact topological manifolds?
Up to homeomorphism, there are 2 one-dimensional topological manifolds and countably many 2- and 3-dimensional compact manifolds, respectively, since each manifold in these dimensions can be ...
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Not all manifolds can be triangulated: In which dimensions?
I know that Ciprian Manolescu has settled the triangulation conjecture in the negative: Not all manifolds can be triangulated. I've only read secondary literature on this result, which did not detail ...
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What manifolds are bounded by RP^odd?
Real projective spaces $\mathbb{R}P^n$ have $\mathbb{Z}/2$ cohomology rings $\mathbb{Z}/2[x]/(x^{n+1})$ and total Stiefel-Whitney class $(1+x)^{n+1}$ which is $1$ when $n$ is odd, so it follows that ...
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Good covers of manifolds
It is well-known and easy to prove (see for instance this post) that every smooth manifold admits a good cover, i.e., a locally finite cover by open balls such that all nonempty intersections of the ...
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geometric interpretation of Lie bracket
On page 159 of "A Comprehensive Introduction To Differential Geometry Vol.1" by Spivak has written:
We thus see that the bracket $[X,Y]$ measures, in some sense, the extent to
which the integral ...
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"Affine communication" for topological manifolds
There is a situation that comes up regularly in algebraic topology when giving proofs of facts about manifolds, like Poincare duality and the like. The typical sequence goes like this:
Prove ...
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Is there a manifold with fundamental group $\mathbb{Q}$?
It is known that the fundamental group of a locally path connected, path connected compact metric space is finitely presented or uncountable. Furthermore the fundamental group of every manifold is ...
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A Pachner complex for triangulated manifolds
A theorem of Pachner's states that if two triangulated PL-manifolds are PL-homeomorphic, the two triangulations are related via a finite sequence of moves, nowadays called "Pachner moves".
A ...
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A manifold is a homotopy type and _what_ extra structure?
Motivation: Surfaces
Closed oriented 2-manifolds (surfaces) are "classified by their homotopy type". By this we mean that two closed oriented surfaces are diffeomorphic iff they're homotopy ...
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Important results that use infinite-dimensional manifolds?
Are Banach manifolds (or other types of infinite-dimensional manifolds) just curiosities, or have they been utilized to prove some interesting/important results? Where do they turn up? Important ...
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A book on locally ringed spaces?
Are there enough interesting results that hold for general locally ringed spaces for a book to have been written? If there are, do you know of a book? If you do, pelase post it, one per answer and a ...
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A "meta-mathematical principle" of MacPherson
In an appendix to his notes on intersection homology and perverse sheaves, MacPherson writes
Why do we want to consider only spaces $V$ that admit a decomposition into manifolds? The intuitive ...
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Euler Characteristic of a manifold with non-vanishing vector field,
A friend of mine recently asked me if I knew any simple, conceptual argument (even one that is perhaps only heuristic) to show that if a triangulated manifold has a non-vanishing vector field, then ...
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Is there a flat manifold with trivial first homology?
Is there a closed flat manifold whose fundamental group has trivial abelianization?
The famous Hantzsche–Wendt flat manifold has fundamental group with finite abelianization.
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Ring of closed manifolds modulo fiber bundles
Let $R$ be the ring which is generated by homeomorphism classes $[M]$ of compact closed manifolds (of arbitrary dimension) subject to the relations that
$$[F]\cdot [B] = [E]$$
if there exists a fibre ...
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Closed manifold with non-vanishing homotopy groups and vanishing homology groups
Is there a closed connected $n$-dimensional topological manifold $M$ ($n\geq 2$) such that $\pi_i(M)\neq 0$ for all $i>0$ and $H_i(M, \mathbb{Z})=0$ for $i\neq 0$, $n$? The manifold $S^1\times S^2$ ...
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Classification of 1-dimensional manifolds (not second-countable)
It is easy to see that every connected $1$-dimensional second-countable manifold (that is, what is often called just a manifold) is either homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}$ or to $S^1$. Now let's drop the ...
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Are there geometrically formal manifolds, which are not rationally elliptic?
Formality of a space is meant in the sense of Sullivan, i.e. a space $X$ is called formal, if its commutative differential graded algebra of piecewise linear differential forms $(A_{PL}(X),d)$ is ...
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Questions on J. F. Nash's answer about his errors in the proof of embedding theorem
In the interview of John Nash taken by Christian Skau and Martin Gaussen, in EMS Newsletter, September, 2015 when asked
Is it true, as rumours have it, that
you started to work on the embedding ...
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On a curious map from the complex projective plane into $S^5$
I have heavily edited the post (including the title), based on a comment by @GregoryArone that my map $f$ is not injective. In an earlier version of this post, I had thought to have constructed a ...
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Smooth manifolds as idempotent splitting completion
The nlab has a particularly interesting thing to say about the category of smooth manifolds: it is the idempotent-splitting completion of the category of open sets of Euclidean spaces and smooth maps.
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Are topological manifolds homotopy equivalent to smooth manifolds?
There exist topological manifolds which don't admit a smooth structure in dimensions > 3, but I haven't seen much discussion on homotopy type. It seems much more reasonable that we can find a smooth ...
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Gauss-Bonnet Theorem for Graphs?
One can define the Euler characteristic χ for a graph as the number of vertices minus the number of edges. Thus an $n$-cycle has $\chi = 0$ and $K_4$ has $\chi=-2$.
Is there an analog for the ...
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Non-regular Connected Hausdorff Banach Manifold
After reading this MO post, I am wondering:
Is every (connected) Hausdorff Banach manifold a regular space?
Though unjustified, page 53 of this paper nonchalantly states: "Note that a Hausdorff ...
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The third axiom in the definition of (infinite-dimensional) vector bundles: why?
Serge Lang's Differential and Riemannian Manifolds is a no doubt the best available reference for the theory of not-necessarily-finite-dimensional differential manifolds, but unfortunately it suffers ...
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Is every rational realized as the Euler characteristic of some manifold or orbifold?
Let me first ask the question for two-dimensional compact, connected manifolds and orbifolds.
Then, if the answer is No, one can remove various conditions on the dimension,
and allow non-compact ...
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Uniqueness of compactification of an end of a manifold
Let $M$ be an $n$-dimensional manifold (smooth or topological). I call $\bar{M}$ a compactification of $M$ if it is an $n$-dimensional compact manifold with boundary $\partial \bar{M}$, an $(n-1)$-...
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Does a *topological* manifold have an exhaustion by compact submanifolds with boundary?
If $M$ is a connected smooth manifold, then it is easy to show that there is a sequence of connected compact smooth submanifolds with boundary $M_1\subseteq M_2\subseteq\cdots$ such that $M=\bigcup_{i=...
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Are homeomorphic open subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$ also diffeomorphic?
Let $U_1, U_2$ be open subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$. Both are naturally differentiable submanifold, getting the differentiable structure from $\mathbb{R}^n$. Further, both are natural topological ...
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Mapping class groups in high dimension
$\DeclareMathOperator\MCG{MCG}\DeclareMathOperator\Diff{Diff}\DeclareMathOperator\Homeo{Homeo}$Let $M$ be a $1$-connected, closed, smooth manifold with $\dim(M)>4$ and let us set $\MCG(M)=\pi_0(\...
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Do most manifolds have symmetries? or not?
Let us say that a (closed, connected) manifold has a symmetry if it admits a non-trivial action by a finite group. Note that I am not asking the action to be free. So for example rotating the 2-sphere ...
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Does every vector bundle allow a finite trivialization cover?
Suppose there is a vector bundle (smooth, with constant rank finite-dimensional fibres) over a (smooth, second-countable, Hausdorff, not necessarily connected) manifold $B$ of dimension $n$.
(a) Is ...
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What is an example of an orbifold which is not a topological manifold?
In Thurston's book The Geometry and Topology of Three-Manifolds it is proven that the underlying space of a two-dimensional orbifold is always a topological surface.
Are there any easy examples of ...
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Is $\mathbb{CP}^3$ minus two points the universal cover of a compact manifold?
After reading some recent questions on mathoverflow about universal coverings, I am curious about the following:
Is it possible to construct a closed $6$-manifold $M$, with universal cover ...
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Topological $n$-manifolds have the homotopy type of $n$-dimensional CW-complexes
I search for a chain of clean references, which lead the fact of topological manifolds of dimension $n$ having the homotopy type of a CW of dimension $n$.
Milnor's On spaces having the homotopy type ...
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isotopy inverse embeddings vs. diffeomorphisms
I would like to find an example, if one exists, of manifolds $M$ and $N$ with embeddings $f:M\to N$ and $g:N\to M$ such that $f\circ g$ and $g\circ f$ are both isotopic (i.e. homotopic through ...
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If $X$ is a simplicial complex, is there a characterization of the links of its vertices that is equivalent to the statement "$|X|$ is a manifold"?
We have a characterization when we want $|X|$ to be a PL-manifold, in particular that the links of all the vertices are themselves (PL) spheres. If we are in the category of PL- spaces then this is a ...
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Manifolds as Cauchy completed objects
The category of smooth manifolds (SmoothMfld) can be thought of the Cauchy completion of the category $U$ of open subsets of Euclidean spaces (with smooth maps) [1]. This fact is shocking to me as it ...
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Distinct manifolds with the same configuration spaces?
For a space $X$, let $C_k X$ denote the space of configurations of $k$ distinct unordered points in $X$.
What is an example of a pair of smooth manifolds $M$ and $N$ that are not homeomorphic but ...
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Is every real n-manifold isomorphic to a quotient of $\mathbb{R}^n$?
I'm curious about the following:
Is every real $n$-manifold isomorphic to a quotient of $\mathbb{R}^n$?
Thanks.
EDIT: As Tilman points out, the manifold should be connected. Also, yes, I'm thinking ...
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(Very) High dimensional manifolds
Usually one regards manifolds up to dimension 4 as a part of low dimensional topology. There are plenty of various results which work only in low dimensional topology; especially in dimension 4. ...