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Parallel Transport
In differential geometry, parallel transport (or parallel translation) is a way of transporting geometrical data along smooth curves in a manifold. If the manifold is equipped with an affine connection (a covariant derivative or connection on the tangent bundle), then this connection allows one to transport vectors of the manifold along curves so that they stay '' parallel'' with respect to the connection. The parallel transport for a connection thus supplies a way of, in some sense, moving the local geometry of a manifold along a curve: that is, of ''connecting'' the geometries of nearby points. There may be many notions of parallel transport available, but a specification of one way of connecting up the geometries of points on a curve is tantamount to providing a ''connection''. In fact, the usual notion of connection is the infinitesimal analog of parallel transport. Or, ''vice versa'', parallel transport is the local realization of a connection. As parallel transport suppl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Cartan Connection
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a Cartan connection is a flexible generalization of the notion of an affine connection. It may also be regarded as a specialization of the general concept of a principal connection, in which the geometry of the principal bundle is tied to the geometry of the base manifold using a solder form. Cartan connections describe the geometry of manifolds modelled on homogeneous spaces. The theory of Cartan connections was developed by Élie Cartan, as part of (and a way of formulating) his method of moving frames (''repère mobile''). The main idea is to develop a suitable notion of the connection forms and curvature using moving frames adapted to the particular geometrical problem at hand. In relativity or Riemannian geometry, orthonormal frames are used to obtain a description of the Levi-Civita connection as a Cartan connection. For Lie groups, Maurer–Cartan frames are used to view the Maurer–Cartan form of the group as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pullback Bundle
In mathematics, a pullback bundle or induced bundle is the fiber bundle that is induced by a map of its base-space. Given a fiber bundle and a continuous map one can define a "pullback" of by as a bundle over . The fiber of over a point in is just the fiber of over . Thus is the disjoint union of all these fibers equipped with a suitable topology. Formal definition Let be a fiber bundle with abstract fiber and let be a continuous map. Define the pullback bundle by :f^E = \\subseteq B'\times E and equip it with the subspace topology and the projection map given by the projection onto the first factor, i.e., :\pi'(b',e) = b'.\, The projection onto the second factor gives a map :h \colon f^E \to E such that the following diagram commutes: :\begin f^E & \stackrel & E\\ ' \downarrow & & \downarrow \pi\\ B' & \stackrel f & B \end If is a local trivialization of then is a local trivialization of where :\psi(b',e) = (b', \mbox_2(\varphi(e))).\, It then fol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pullback (differential Geometry)
Let \phi:M\to N be a smooth map between smooth manifolds M and N. Then there is an associated linear map from the space of 1-forms on N (the linear space of sections of the cotangent bundle) to the space of 1-forms on M. This linear map is known as the pullback (by \phi), and is frequently denoted by \phi^*. More generally, any covariant tensor field – in particular any differential form – on N may be pulled back to M using \phi. When the map \phi is a diffeomorphism, then the pullback, together with the pushforward, can be used to transform any tensor field from N to M or vice versa. In particular, if \phi is a diffeomorphism between open subsets of \R^n and \R^n, viewed as a change of coordinates (perhaps between different charts on a manifold M), then the pullback and pushforward describe the transformation properties of covariant and contravariant tensors used in more traditional (coordinate dependent) approaches to the subject. The idea behind the pullba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Vector Field
In vector calculus and physics, a vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point in a space, most commonly Euclidean space \mathbb^n. A vector field on a plane can be visualized as a collection of arrows with given magnitudes and directions, each attached to a point on the plane. Vector fields are often used to model, for example, the speed and direction of a moving fluid throughout three dimensional space, such as the wind, or the strength and direction of some force, such as the magnetic or gravitational force, as it changes from one point to another point. The elements of differential and integral calculus extend naturally to vector fields. When a vector field represents force, the line integral of a vector field represents the work done by a force moving along a path, and under this interpretation conservation of energy is exhibited as a special case of the fundamental theorem of calculus. Vector fields can usefully be thought of as representing the velocit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line, but that does not have to be straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point. This is the definition that appeared more than 2000 years ago in Euclid's ''Elements'': "The urvedline is ��the first species of quantity, which has only one dimension, namely length, without any width nor depth, and is nothing else than the flow or run of the point which ��will leave from its imaginary moving some vestige in length, exempt of any width." This definition of a curve has been formalized in modern mathematics as: ''A curve is the image of an interval to a topological space by a continuous function''. In some contexts, the function that defines the curve is called a ''parametrization'', and the curve is a parametric curve. In this article, these curves are sometimes called ''topological curves'' to distinguish them from more constrained curves su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Derivative
In mathematics, the derivative is a fundamental tool that quantifies the sensitivity to change of a function's output with respect to its input. The derivative of a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, when it exists, is the slope of the tangent line to the graph of the function at that point. The tangent line is the best linear approximation of the function near that input value. For this reason, the derivative is often described as the instantaneous rate of change, the ratio of the instantaneous change in the dependent variable to that of the independent variable. The process of finding a derivative is called differentiation. There are multiple different notations for differentiation. '' Leibniz notation'', named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, is represented as the ratio of two differentials, whereas ''prime notation'' is written by adding a prime mark. Higher order notations represent repeated differentiation, and they are usually denoted in Leib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Levi-Civita Connection
In Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian geometry (in particular the Lorentzian geometry of general relativity), the Levi-Civita connection is the unique affine connection on the tangent bundle of a manifold that preserves the ( pseudo-) Riemannian metric and is torsion-free. The fundamental theorem of Riemannian geometry states that there is a unique connection that satisfies these properties. In the theory of Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds the term covariant derivative is often used for the Levi-Civita connection. The components (structure coefficients) of this connection with respect to a system of local coordinates are called Christoffel symbols. History The Levi-Civita connection is named after Tullio Levi-Civita, although originally "discovered" by Elwin Bruno Christoffel. Levi-Civita, along with Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, used Christoffel's symbols to define the notion of parallel transport and explore the relationship of parallel transport with the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Riemannian Manifold
In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold is a geometric space on which many geometric notions such as distance, angles, length, volume, and curvature are defined. Euclidean space, the N-sphere, n-sphere, hyperbolic space, and smooth surfaces in three-dimensional space, such as ellipsoids and paraboloids, are all examples of Riemannian manifold, manifolds. Riemannian manifolds are named after German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, who first conceptualized them. Formally, a Riemannian metric (or just a metric) on a smooth manifold is a choice of inner product for each tangent space of the manifold. A Riemannian manifold is a smooth manifold together with a Riemannian metric. The techniques of differential and integral calculus are used to pull geometric data out of the Riemannian metric. For example, integration leads to the Riemannian distance function, whereas differentiation is used to define curvature and parallel transport. Any smooth surface in three-dimensional Eucl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Positive-definite
In mathematics, positive definiteness is a property of any object to which a bilinear form or a sesquilinear form may be naturally associated, which is positive-definite. See, in particular: * Positive-definite bilinear form * Positive-definite function * Positive-definite function on a group * Positive-definite functional * Positive-definite kernel * Positive-definite matrix In mathematics, a symmetric matrix M with real entries is positive-definite if the real number \mathbf^\mathsf M \mathbf is positive for every nonzero real column vector \mathbf, where \mathbf^\mathsf is the row vector transpose of \mathbf. Mo ... * Positive-definite operator * Positive-definite quadratic form References *. *. {{Set index article, mathematics Quadratic forms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Riemannian Metric
In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold is a geometric space on which many geometric notions such as distance, angles, length, volume, and curvature are defined. Euclidean space, the N-sphere, n-sphere, hyperbolic space, and smooth surfaces in three-dimensional space, such as ellipsoids and paraboloids, are all examples of Riemannian manifold, manifolds. Riemannian manifolds are named after German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, who first conceptualized them. Formally, a Riemannian metric (or just a metric) on a smooth manifold is a choice of inner product for each tangent space of the manifold. A Riemannian manifold is a smooth manifold together with a Riemannian metric. The techniques of differential and integral calculus are used to pull geometric data out of the Riemannian metric. For example, integration leads to the Riemannian distance function, whereas differentiation is used to define curvature and parallel transport. Any smooth surface in three-dimensional Eucl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Tangent Space
In mathematics, the tangent space of a manifold is a generalization of to curves in two-dimensional space and to surfaces in three-dimensional space in higher dimensions. In the context of physics the tangent space to a manifold at a point can be viewed as the space of possible velocities for a particle moving on the manifold. Informal description In differential geometry, one can attach to every point x of a differentiable manifold a ''tangent space''—a real vector space that intuitively contains the possible directions in which one can tangentially pass through x . The elements of the tangent space at x are called the ''tangent vectors'' at x . This is a generalization of the notion of a vector, based at a given initial point, in a Euclidean space. The dimension of the tangent space at every point of a connected manifold is the same as that of the manifold itself. For example, if the given manifold is a 2 -sphere, then one can picture the tangent space at a point ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |