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Homotopy theory, homological algebra, algebraic treatments of manifolds.

20 votes

Are there examples of non-orientable manifolds in nature?

Well, these microscopic examples (molecules), and small-scale examples (pulley-belts), and far-out, conjectured cosmological examples are all well and good, but as a Bostonian born and bred I am disap …
Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine's user avatar
27 votes
2 answers
3k views

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 Eu …
2 votes

Does a *topological* manifold have an exhaustion by compact submanifolds with boundary?

Doesn't this depend on the definition of "manifold". If the only condition is being locally Euclidean, then there are connected non second countable examples (e.g., the "long line") for which the answ …
Dick Palais's user avatar
  • 15.3k
44 votes
Accepted

Motivating the de Rham theorem

Here is a really "trivial" application. Since a volume form (say from a Riemannian metric) for a compact manifold $M$ is clearly closed (it has top degree) and not exact (by Stoke's Theorem), it follo …
Dick Palais's user avatar
  • 15.3k
4 votes

Does a finite-dimensional Lie algebra always exponentiate into a universal covering group

The short answer to 3. is "no". The simplest example is the circle group, $e^{it}$ of complex numbers of absolute value 1, (thought of as a $1 \times 1$ matrices), its Lie algebra $A$ consists of the …
Dick Palais's user avatar
  • 15.3k
8 votes

Is $L^p(\mathbb{R})$ minus the zero function contractible?

Here is a simple proof for case of a Hilbert space $V$. Since $V$ minus the origin deformation retracts onto the unit sphere $S^\infty$, it suffices to show that $S^\infty$ is contractible, and that …
Dick Palais's user avatar
  • 15.3k
4 votes

Compactness and Covering Spaces

Well, the obvious argument that any sequence has a convergent subsequence that your three friends used for the metrizeable case generalizes easily to show that any net has a convergent subnet in the g …
Dick Palais's user avatar
  • 15.3k