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Kirby–Siebenmann Class
In mathematics, more specifically in geometric topology, the Kirby–Siebenmann class is an obstruction for topological manifolds to allow a ''PL''-structure. The KS-class For a topological manifold ''M'', the Kirby–Siebenmann class \kappa(M) \in H^4(M;\mathbb/2) is an element of the fourth cohomology group of ''M'' that vanishes if ''M'' admits a piecewise linear structure. It is the only such obstruction, which can be phrased as the weak equivalence TOP/PL \sim K(\mathbb Z/2,3) of ''TOP/PL'' with an Eilenberg–MacLane space.. The Kirby-Siebenmann class can be used to prove the existence of topological manifolds that do not admit a PL-structure. Concrete examples of such manifolds are E_8 \times T^n, n \geq 1, where E_8 stands for Freedman's E8 manifold. The class is named after Robion Kirby and Larry Siebenmann, who developed the theory of topological and ''PL''-manifolds. See also *Hauptvermutung *Kervaire–Milnor group In mathematics, especially differential t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topology
Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such as Stretch factor, stretching, Torsion (mechanics), twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing holes, opening holes, tearing, gluing, or passing through itself. A topological space is a Set (mathematics), set endowed with a structure, called a ''Topology (structure), topology'', which allows defining continuous deformation of subspaces, and, more generally, all kinds of List of continuity-related mathematical topics, continuity. Euclidean spaces, and, more generally, metric spaces are examples of topological spaces, as any distance or metric defines a topology. The deformations that are considered in topology are homeomorphisms and Homotopy, homotopies. A property that is invariant under such deformations is a to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topological Manifold
In topology, a topological manifold is a topological space that locally resembles real ''n''- dimensional Euclidean space. Topological manifolds are an important class of topological spaces, with applications throughout mathematics. All manifolds are topological manifolds by definition. Other types of manifolds are formed by adding structure to a topological manifold (e.g. differentiable manifolds are topological manifolds equipped with a differential structure). Every manifold has an "underlying" topological manifold, obtained by simply "forgetting" the added structure. However, not every topological manifold can be endowed with a particular additional structure. For example, the E8 manifold is a topological manifold which cannot be endowed with a differentiable structure. Formal definition A topological space ''X'' is called locally Euclidean if there is a non-negative integer ''n'' such that every point in ''X'' has a neighborhood which is homeomorphic to real ''n''-space R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cohomology Group
In mathematics, specifically in homology theory and algebraic topology, cohomology is a general term for a sequence of abelian groups, usually one associated with a topological space, often defined from a cochain complex. Cohomology can be viewed as a method of assigning richer algebraic invariants to a space than homology. Some versions of cohomology arise by dualizing the construction of homology. In other words, cochains are functions on the group of chains in homology theory. From its start in topology, this idea became a dominant method in the mathematics of the second half of the twentieth century. From the initial idea of homology as a method of constructing algebraic invariants of topological spaces, the range of applications of homology and cohomology theories has spread throughout geometry and algebra. The terminology tends to hide the fact that cohomology, a contravariant theory, is more natural than homology in many applications. At a basic level, this has to do with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piecewise Linear Structure
In mathematics, a piecewise linear manifold (PL manifold) is a topological manifold together with a piecewise linear structure on it. Such a structure can be defined by means of an atlas, such that one can pass from chart to chart in it by piecewise linear functions. This is slightly stronger than the topological notion of a triangulation. An isomorphism of PL manifolds is called a PL homeomorphism. Relation to other categories of manifolds PL, or more precisely PDIFF, sits between DIFF (the category of smooth manifolds) and TOP (the category of topological manifolds): it is categorically "better behaved" than DIFF — for example, the Generalized Poincaré conjecture is true in PL (with the possible exception of dimension 4, where it is equivalent to DIFF), but is false generally in DIFF — but is "worse behaved" than TOP, as elaborated in surgery theory. Smooth manifolds Smooth manifolds have canonical PL structures — they are uniquely ''triangulizable,'' by Whitehead's t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eilenberg–MacLane Space
In mathematics, specifically algebraic topology, an Eilenberg–MacLane spaceSaunders Mac Lane originally spelt his name "MacLane" (without a space), and co-published the papers establishing the notion of Eilenberg–MacLane spaces under this name. (See e.g. ) In this context it is therefore conventional to write the name without a space. is a topological space with a single nontrivial homotopy group. Let ''G'' be a group and ''n'' a positive integer. A connected topological space ''X'' is called an Eilenberg–MacLane space of type K(G,n), if it has ''n''-th homotopy group \pi_n(X) isomorphic to ''G'' and all other homotopy groups trivial. Assuming that ''G'' is abelian in the case that n > 1, Eilenberg–MacLane spaces of type K(G,n) always exist, and are all weak homotopy equivalent. Thus, one may consider K(G,n) as referring to a weak homotopy equivalence class of spaces. It is common to refer to any representative as "a K(G,n)" or as "a model of K(G,n)". Moreover, it is comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Freedman
Michael Hartley Freedman (born April 21, 1951) is an American mathematician at Microsoft Station Q, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1986, he was awarded a Fields Medal for his work on the 4-dimensional generalized Poincaré conjecture. Freedman and Robion Kirby showed that an exotic R4 manifold exists. Life and career Freedman was born in Los Angeles, California, in the United States. His father, Benedict Freedman, was an American Jewish aeronautical engineer, musician, writer, and mathematician. His mother, Nancy Mars Freedman, performed as an actress and also trained as an artist. His parents cowrote a series of novels together.. He entered the University of California, Berkeley, but dropped out after two semesters. In the same year he wrote a letter to Ralph Fox, a Princeton University professor at the time, and was admitted to the university's graduate school, where in 1968 he continued his studies and received a Ph.D. in 1973 for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
E8 Manifold
In low-dimensional topology, a branch of mathematics, the ''E''8 manifold is the unique compact, simply connected topological 4-manifold with intersection form the ''E''8 lattice. History The E_8 manifold was discovered by Michael Freedman in 1982. Rokhlin's theorem shows that it has no smooth structure (as does Donaldson's theorem), and in fact, combined with the work of Andrew Casson on the Casson invariant, this shows that the E_8 manifold is not even triangulable as a simplicial complex. Construction The manifold can be constructed by first plumbing together disc bundles of Euler number 2 over the sphere, according to the Dynkin diagram for E_8. This results in P_, a 4-manifold whose boundary is homeomorphic to the Poincaré homology sphere. Freedman's theorem on fake 4-balls then says we can cap off this homology sphere with a fake 4-ball to obtain the E_8 manifold. See also * * * References * * {{DEFAULTSORT:E8 Manifold 4-manifolds Geometri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robion Kirby
Robion Cromwell Kirby (born February 25, 1938) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in low-dimensional topology. Together with Laurent C. Siebenmann he developed the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant for classifying the piecewise linear structures on a topological manifold. He also proved the fundamental result on the Kirby calculus, a method for describing 3-manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds by surgery on framed links. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he has over 50 doctoral students and is the editor of an influential problem list. Career He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1965, with thesis "Smoothing Locally Flat Imbeddings" written under the direction of . He soon became an assistant professor at UCLA. While there he developed his " torus trick" which enabled him to solve, in dimensions greater than four (with additional joint work with Siebenmann), four of John Milnor's seven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Siebenmann
Laurent Carl Siebenmann (the first name is sometimes spelled Laurence or Larry) (born 1939) is a Canadian mathematician based at the Université de Paris-Sud at Orsay, France. After working for several years as a Professor at Orsay he became a Directeur de Recherches at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in 1976. He is a topologist who works on manifolds and who co-discovered the Kirby–Siebenmann class. Education Siebenmann's undergraduate studies were at the University of Toronto. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University under the supervision of John Milnor in 1965 with the dissertation ''The obstruction to finding a boundary for an open manifold of dimension greater than five''. His doctoral students at Orsay included Francis Bonahon and Albert Fathi. Recognition In 1985 he was awarded the Jeffery–Williams Prize by the Canadian Mathematical Society. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hauptvermutung
The ''Hauptvermutung'' of geometric topology is a now refuted conjecture asking whether any two Triangulation (topology), triangulations of a triangulable space have subdivisions that are combinatorially equivalent, i.e. the subdivided triangulations are built up in the same combinatorial pattern. It was originally formulated as a conjecture in 1908 by Ernst Steinitz and Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze, but it is now known to be false. History The non-manifold version was disproved by John Milnor in 1961 using Analytic torsion, Reidemeister torsion. The manifold version is true in dimensions m\le 3. The cases m = 2 and 3 were mathematical proof, proved by Tibor Radó and Edwin E. Moise in the 1920s and 1950s, respectively. An obstruction to the manifold version was formulated by Andrew Casson and Dennis Sullivan in 1967–69 (originally in the simply-connected case), using the Rochlin invariant and the cohomology group H^3(M;\mathbb/2\mathbb). In dimension m \ge 5, a homeomorphi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kervaire–Milnor Group
In mathematics, especially differential topology and cobordism theory, a Kervaire–Milnor group is an abelian group defined as the h-cobordism classes of homotopy spheres with the connected sum as composition and the reverse orientation as inversion. It controls the existence of smooth structures on topological and piecewise linear (PL) manifolds. Concerning the related question of PL structures on topological manifolds, the obstruction is given by the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant, which is a lot easier to understand. In all but three and four dimensions, Kervaire–Milnor groups furthermore give the possible smooth structures on spheres, hence exotic spheres. They are named after the French mathematician Michel Kervaire and the American mathematician John Milnor, who first described them in 1962. (Their paper was originally only supposed to be the first part, but a second part was never published.) Definition An important property of spheres is their neutrality with respect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
