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Homotopy Sphere
In algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics, a homotopy sphere is an ''n''-manifold that is homotopy equivalent to the ''n''-sphere. It thus has the same homotopy groups and the same homology groups as the ''n''-sphere, and so every homotopy sphere is necessarily a homology sphere. The topological generalized Poincaré conjecture is that any ''n''-dimensional homotopy sphere is homeomorphic to the ''n''-sphere; it was solved by Stephen Smale in dimensions five and higher, by Michael Freedman in dimension 4, and for dimension 3 (the original Poincaré conjecture) by Grigori Perelman in 2005. The resolution of the smooth Poincaré conjecture in dimensions 5 and larger implies that homotopy spheres in those dimensions are precisely exotic spheres. It is still an open question () whether or not there are non-trivial smooth homotopy spheres in dimension 4. References * A. Kosinski, ''Differential Manifolds.'' Academic Press 1993. See also *Homology sphere *Homotopy groups of sphere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Algebraic Topology
250px|A torus, one of the most frequently studied objects in algebraic topology Algebraic topology is a branch of mathematics that uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariants that classify topological spaces up to homeomorphism, though usually most classify up to homotopy equivalence. Although algebraic topology primarily uses algebra to study topological problems, using topology to solve algebraic problems is sometimes also possible. Algebraic topology, for example, allows for a convenient proof that any subgroup of a free group is again a free group. Main branches of algebraic topology Below are some of the main areas studied in algebraic topology: Homotopy groups In mathematics, homotopy groups are used in algebraic topology to classify topological spaces. The first and simplest homotopy group is the fundamental group, which records information about loops in a space. Intuitively, homotopy groups record informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Stephen Smale
Stephen Smale (born July 15, 1930) is an American mathematician, known for his research in topology, dynamical systems and mathematical economics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and spent more than three decades on the mathematics faculty of the University of California, Berkeley (1960–1961 and 1964–1995). Education and career Smale was born in Flint, Michigan and entered the University of Michigan in 1948. Initially, he was a good student, placing into an honors calculus sequence taught by Bob Thrall and earning himself A's. However, his sophomore and junior years were marred with mediocre grades, mostly Bs, Cs and even an F in nuclear physics. However, with some luck, Smale was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Michigan's mathematics department. Yet again, Smale performed poorly in his first years, earning a C average as a graduate student. When the department chair, Hildebrandt, threatened to kick Smale out, he began to take his studies more ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homotopy Groups Of Spheres
In the mathematical field of algebraic topology, the homotopy groups of spheres describe how spheres of various dimensions can wrap around each other. They are examples of topological invariants, which reflect, in algebraic terms, the structure of spheres viewed as topological spaces, forgetting about their precise geometry. Unlike homology groups, which are also topological invariants, the homotopy groups are surprisingly complex and difficult to compute. is a nontrivial mapping of the 3-sphere to the 2-sphere, and generates the third homotopy group of the 2-sphere. , an interesting mapping from the three-dimensional sphere to the two-dimensional sphere. This mapping is the generator of the third homotopy group of the 2-sphere. The -dimensional unit N-sphere|sphere — called the -sphere for brevity, and denoted as — generalizes the familiar circle () and the ordinary sphere (). The -sphere may be defined geometrically as the set of points in a Euclidean space of dimension loc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homology Sphere
In algebraic topology, a homology sphere is an ''n''-manifold ''X'' having the homology groups of an ''n''-sphere, for some integer n\ge 1. That is, :H_0(X,\Z) = H_n(X,\Z) = \Z and :H_i(X,\Z) = \ for all other ''i''. Therefore ''X'' is a connected space, with one non-zero higher Betti number, namely, b_n=1. It does not follow that ''X'' is simply connected, only that its fundamental group is perfect (see Hurewicz theorem). A rational homology sphere is defined similarly but using homology with rational coefficients. Poincaré homology sphere The Poincaré homology sphere (also known as Poincaré dodecahedral space) is a particular example of a homology sphere, first constructed by Henri Poincaré. Being a spherical 3-manifold, it is the only homology 3-sphere (besides the 3-sphere itself) with a finite fundamental group. Its fundamental group is known as the binary icosahedral group and has order 120. This shows that there exist 3-manifolds with the same homology groups as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Exotic Sphere
In differential topology, an exotic sphere is a differentiable manifold ''M'' that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the standard Euclidean ''n''-sphere. That is, ''M'' is a sphere from the point of view of all its topological properties, but carrying a smooth structure that is not the familiar one (hence the name "exotic"). The first exotic spheres were constructed by in dimension n = 7 as S^3-bundles over S^4. He showed that there are at least 7 differentiable structures on the 7-sphere. In any dimension showed that the diffeomorphism classes of oriented exotic spheres form the non-trivial elements of an abelian monoid under connected sum, which is a finite abelian group if the dimension is not 4. The classification of exotic spheres by showed that the oriented exotic 7-spheres are the non-trivial elements of a cyclic group of order 28 under the operation of connected sum. Introduction The unit ''n''-sphere, S^n, is the set of all (''n''+1)-tuples (x_1, x_2, \ldots , x ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Grigori Perelman
Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman ( rus|links=no|Григорий Яковлевич Перельман|p=ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲɪj ˈjakəvlʲɪvʲɪtɕ pʲɪrʲɪlʲˈman|a=Ru-Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman.oga; born 13 June 1966) is a Russian mathematician who is known for his contributions to the fields of geometric analysis, Riemannian geometry, and geometric topology. In the 1990s, partly in collaboration with Yuri Burago, Mikhael Gromov, and Anton Petrunin, he made influential contributions to the study of Alexandrov spaces. In 1994, he proved the soul conjecture in Riemannian geometry, which had been an open problem for the previous 20 years. In 2002 and 2003, he developed new techniques in the analysis of Ricci flow, thereby providing a detailed sketch of a proof of the Poincaré conjecture and Thurston's geometrization conjecture, the former of which had been a famous open problem in mathematics for the past century. The full details of Perelman's work were filled in and explained by v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Poincaré Conjecture
In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. The conjecture states: An equivalent form of the conjecture involves a coarser form of equivalence than homeomorphism called homotopy equivalence: if a 3-manifold is ''homotopy equivalent'' to the 3-sphere, then it is necessarily ''homeomorphic'' to it. Originally conjectured by Henri Poincaré, the theorem concerns a space that locally looks like ordinary three-dimensional space but is connected, finite in size, and lacks any boundary (a closed 3-manifold). The Poincaré conjecture claims that if such a space has the additional property that each loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is necessarily a three-dimensional sphere. The analogous conjectures for all higher dimensions were proved before a proof of the original conjecture was found. After nearly a century of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
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, and after two semesters dropped out. In the same year he wrote a letter to Ralph Fox, a Princeton professor at the time, and was admitted to graduate school so in 1968 he continued his studies at Princeton University where he received Ph.D. degree in 1973 for his do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homeomorphic
and a donut (torus) illustrating that they are homeomorphic. But there need not be a continuous deformation for two spaces to be homeomorphic — only a continuous mapping with a continuous inverse function. In the mathematics|mathematical field of topology, a homeomorphism, topological isomorphism, or bicontinuous function is a continuous function between topological spaces that has a continuous inverse function. Homeomorphisms are the isomorphisms in the category of topological spaces—that is, they are the mappings that preserve all the topological properties of a given space. Two spaces with a homeomorphism between them are called homeomorphic, and from a topological viewpoint they are the same. The word ''homeomorphism'' comes from the Greek words ''ὅμοιος'' (''homoios'') = similar or same and ''μορφή'' (''morphē'') = shape, form, introduced to mathematics by Henri Poincaré in 1895. Very roughly speaking, a topological space is a geometric object, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Mathematics
Mathematics (from Greek: ) includes the study of such topics as quantity (number theory), structure (algebra), space (geometry), and change (analysis). It has no generally accepted definition. Mathematicians seek and use patterns to formulate new conjectures; they resolve the truth or falsity of such by mathematical proof. When mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, mathematical reasoning can be used to provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry. Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's ''Elements''. Since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Peano (185 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Generalized Poincaré Conjecture
In the mathematical area of topology, the generalized Poincaré conjecture is a statement that a manifold which is a homotopy sphere a sphere. More precisely, one fixes a category of manifolds: topological (Top), piecewise linear (PL), or differentiable (Diff). Then the statement is :Every homotopy sphere (a closed ''n''-manifold which is homotopy equivalent to the ''n''-sphere) in the chosen category (i.e. topological manifolds, PL manifolds, or smooth manifolds) is isomorphic in the chosen category (i.e. homeomorphic, PL-isomorphic, or diffeomorphic) to the standard ''n''-sphere. The name derives from the Poincaré conjecture, which was made for (topological or PL) manifolds of dimension 3, where being a homotopy sphere is equivalent to being simply connected and closed. The generalized Poincaré conjecture is known to be true or false in a number of instances, due to the work of many distinguished topologists, including the Fields medal awardees John Milnor, Steve Smale, Michael ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homology Sphere
In algebraic topology, a homology sphere is an ''n''-manifold ''X'' having the homology groups of an ''n''-sphere, for some integer n\ge 1. That is, :H_0(X,\Z) = H_n(X,\Z) = \Z and :H_i(X,\Z) = \ for all other ''i''. Therefore ''X'' is a connected space, with one non-zero higher Betti number, namely, b_n=1. It does not follow that ''X'' is simply connected, only that its fundamental group is perfect (see Hurewicz theorem). A rational homology sphere is defined similarly but using homology with rational coefficients. Poincaré homology sphere The Poincaré homology sphere (also known as Poincaré dodecahedral space) is a particular example of a homology sphere, first constructed by Henri Poincaré. Being a spherical 3-manifold, it is the only homology 3-sphere (besides the 3-sphere itself) with a finite fundamental group. Its fundamental group is known as the binary icosahedral group and has order 120. This shows that there exist 3-manifolds with the same homology groups as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homology (mathematics)
In mathematics, homology is a general way of associating a sequence of algebraic objects, such as abelian groups or modules, to other mathematical objects such as topological spaces. Homology groups were originally defined in algebraic topology. Similar constructions are available in a wide variety of other contexts, such as abstract algebra, groups, Lie algebras, Galois theory, and algebraic geometry. The original motivation for defining homology groups was the observation that two shapes can be distinguished by examining their holes. For instance, a circle is not a disk because the circle has a hole through it while the disk is solid, and the ordinary sphere is not a circle because the sphere encloses a two-dimensional hole while the circle encloses a one-dimensional hole. However, because a hole is "not there", it is not immediately obvious how to define a hole or how to distinguish different kinds of holes. Homology was originally a rigorous mathematical method for definin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Homotopy Group
In mathematics, homotopy groups are used in algebraic topology to classify topological spaces. The first and simplest homotopy group is the fundamental group, which records information about loops in a space. Intuitively, homotopy groups record information about the basic shape, or ''holes'', of a topological space. To define the ''n''-th homotopy group, the base-point-preserving maps from an ''n''-dimensional sphere (with base point) into a given space (with base point) are collected into equivalence classes, called homotopy classes. Two mappings are homotopic if one can be continuously deformed into the other. These homotopy classes form a group, called the ''n''-th homotopy group, \pi_n(X), of the given space ''X'' with base point. Topological spaces with differing homotopy groups are never equivalent (homeomorphic), but topological spaces that ''are not'' homeomorphic ''can'' have the same homotopy groups. The notion of homotopy of paths was introduced by Camille Jordan. Intr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
Sphere
of a sphere A sphere (from Greek language|Greek —, "globe, ball") is a geometrical object in three-dimensional space that is the surface of a ball (viz., analogous to the circular objects in two dimensions, where a "circle" circumscribes its "disk"). Like a circle in a two-dimensional space, a sphere is defined mathematically as the set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in a three-dimensional space.. This distance is the radius of the ball, which is made up from all points with a distance less than (or, for a closed ball, less than ''or equal to'') from the given point, which is the center of the mathematical ball. These are also referred to as the radius and center of the sphere, respectively. The longest straight line segment through the ball, connecting two points of the sphere, passes through the center and its length is thus twice the radius; it is a diameter of both the sphere and its ball. While outside mathematics the terms "sphere" and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] |
