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Affine Connection
In differential geometry, an affine connection is a geometric object on a smooth manifold which ''connects'' nearby tangent spaces, so it permits tangent vector fields to be differentiated as if they were functions on the manifold with values in a fixed vector space. Connections are among the simplest methods of defining differentiation of the sections of vector bundles. The notion of an affine connection has its roots in 19th-century geometry and tensor calculus, but was not fully developed until the early 1920s, by Élie Cartan (as part of his general theory of connections) and Hermann Weyl (who used the notion as a part of his foundations for general relativity). The terminology is due to Cartan and has its origins in the identification of tangent spaces in Euclidean space by translation: the idea is that a choice of affine connection makes a manifold look infinitesimally like Euclidean space not just smoothly, but as an affine space. On any manifold of positive dimension t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Transport Sphere
Parallel may refer to: Mathematics * Parallel (geometry), two lines in the Euclidean plane which never intersect * Parallel (operator), mathematical operation named after the composition of electrical resistance in parallel circuits Science and engineering * Parallel (latitude), an imaginary east–west line circling a globe * Parallel of declination, used in astronomy * Parallel, a geometric term of location meaning "in the same direction" * Parallel electrical circuits Computing * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel Language * Parallelism (grammar), a balance of two or more similar words, phrases, or clauses * Parallelism (rhetoric) Entertainment * ''Parallel'' (manga) * ''Parallel'' (2018 film), a Canadian science fiction thriller film * ''Parallel'' (2024 film) an American science fiction thriller film * ''Parallel'' (video), a compilation of music videos by R.E.M. * ''Parallel'' (The Black Dog album), 1995 * ''Parallel'' (Fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Geodesics
In geometry, a geodesic () is a curve representing in some sense the locally shortest path ( arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection (mathematics), connection. It is a generalization of the notion of a "Line (geometry), straight line". The noun ''wikt:geodesic, geodesic'' and the adjective ''wikt:geodetic, geodetic'' come from ''geodesy'', the science of measuring the size and shape of Earth, though many of the underlying principles can be applied to any Ellipsoidal geodesic, ellipsoidal geometry. In the original sense, a geodesic was the shortest route between two points on the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. For a spherical Earth, it is a line segment, segment of a great circle (see also great-circle distance). The term has since been generalized to more abstract mathematical spaces; for example, in graph theory, one might consider a Distance (graph theory), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lie Derivative
In differential geometry, the Lie derivative ( ), named after Sophus Lie by Władysław Ślebodziński, evaluates the change of a tensor field (including scalar functions, vector fields and one-forms), along the flow defined by another vector field. This change is coordinate invariant and therefore the Lie derivative is defined on any differentiable manifold. Functions, tensor fields and forms can be differentiated with respect to a vector field. If ''T'' is a tensor field and ''X'' is a vector field, then the Lie derivative of ''T'' with respect to ''X'' is denoted \mathcal_X T. The differential operator T \mapsto \mathcal_X T is a derivation of the algebra of tensor fields of the underlying manifold. The Lie derivative commutes with contraction and the exterior derivative on differential forms. Although there are many concepts of taking a derivative in differential geometry, they all agree when the expression being differentiated is a function or scalar field. Thus in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curvature
In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry that intuitively measure the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line or by which a surface deviates from being a plane. If a curve or surface is contained in a larger space, curvature can be defined ''extrinsically'' relative to the ambient space. Curvature of Riemannian manifolds of dimension at least two can be defined ''intrinsically'' without reference to a larger space. For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature ''at a point'' of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle — that is, the circle that best approximates the curve near this point. The curvature of a straight line is zero. In contrast to the tangent, which is a vector quantity, the curvature at a point is typically a scalar q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torsion Tensor
In differential geometry, the torsion tensor is a tensor that is associated to any affine connection. The torsion tensor is a bilinear map of two input vectors X,Y, that produces an output vector T(X,Y) representing the displacement within a tangent space when the tangent space is developed (or "rolled") along an infinitesimal parallelogram whose sides are X,Y. It is skew symmetric in its inputs, because developing over the parallelogram in the opposite sense produces the opposite displacement, similarly to how a screw moves in opposite ways when it is twisted in two directions. Torsion is particularly useful in the study of the geometry of geodesics. Given a system of parametrized geodesics, one can specify a class of affine connections having those geodesics, but differing by their torsions. There is a unique connection which ''absorbs the torsion'', generalizing the Levi-Civita connection to other, possibly non-metric situations (such as Finsler geometry). The difference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connection (principal Bundle)
In mathematics, and especially differential geometry and gauge theory, a connection is a device that defines a notion of parallel transport on the bundle; that is, a way to "connect" or identify fibers over nearby points. A principal ''G''-connection on a principal G-bundle P over a smooth manifold ''M'' is a particular type of connection that is compatible with the action of the group ''G''. A principal connection can be viewed as a special case of the notion of an Ehresmann connection, and is sometimes called a principal Ehresmann connection. It gives rise to (Ehresmann) connections on any fiber bundle associated to ''P'' via the associated bundle construction. In particular, on any associated vector bundle the principal connection induces a covariant derivative, an operator that can differentiate sections of that bundle along tangent directions in the base manifold. Principal connections generalize to arbitrary principal bundles the concept of a linear connection on the fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affine Group
In mathematics, the affine group or general affine group of any affine space is the group of all invertible affine transformations from the space into itself. In the case of a Euclidean space (where the associated field of scalars is the real numbers), the affine group consists of those functions from the space to itself such that the image of every line is a line. Over any field, the affine group may be viewed as a matrix group in a natural way. If the associated field of scalars is the real or complex field, then the affine group is a Lie group. Relation to general linear group Construction from general linear group Concretely, given a vector space , it has an underlying affine space obtained by "forgetting" the origin, with acting by translations, and the affine group of can be described concretely as the semidirect product of by , the general linear group of : :\operatorname(V) = V \rtimes \operatorname(V) The action of on is the natural one (linear transformations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frame Bundle
In mathematics, a frame bundle is a principal fiber bundle F(E) associated with any vector bundle ''E''. The fiber of F(E) over a point ''x'' is the set of all ordered bases, or ''frames'', for ''E_x''. The general linear group acts naturally on F(E) via a change of basis, giving the frame bundle the structure of a principal ''\mathrm(k,\mathbb)''-bundle (where ''k'' is the rank of ''E''). The frame bundle of a smooth manifold is the one associated with its tangent bundle. For this reason it is sometimes called the tangent frame bundle. Definition and construction Let ''E \to X'' be a real vector bundle of rank ''k'' over a topological space ''X''. A frame at a point ''x \in X'' is an ordered basis for the vector space ''E_x''. Equivalently, a frame can be viewed as a linear isomorphism :p : \mathbf^k \to E_x. The set of all frames at ''x'', denoted ''F_x'', has a natural right action by the general linear group ''\mathrm(k,\mathbb)'' of invertible ''k \times k'' matrices: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Tangent Bundle
A tangent bundle is the collection of all of the tangent spaces for all points on a manifold, structured in a way that it forms a new manifold itself. Formally, in differential geometry, the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold M is a manifold TM which assembles all the tangent vectors in M . As a set, it is given by the disjoint unionThe disjoint union ensures that for any two points and of manifold the tangent spaces and have no common vector. This is graphically illustrated in the accompanying picture for tangent bundle of circle , see Examples section: all tangents to a circle lie in the plane of the circle. In order to make them disjoint it is necessary to align them in a plane perpendicular to the plane of the circle. of the tangent spaces of M . That is, : \begin TM &= \bigsqcup_ T_xM \\ &= \bigcup_ \left\ \times T_xM \\ &= \bigcup_ \left\ \\ &= \left\ \end where T_x M denotes the tangent space to M at the point x . So, an el ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connection (vector Bundle)
In mathematics, and especially differential geometry and gauge theory, a connection on a fiber bundle is a device that defines a notion of parallel transport on the bundle; that is, a way to "connect" or identify fibers over nearby points. The most common case is that of a linear connection on a vector bundle, for which the notion of parallel transport must be linear. A linear connection is equivalently specified by a '' covariant derivative'', an operator that differentiates sections of the bundle along tangent directions in the base manifold, in such a way that parallel sections have derivative zero. Linear connections generalize, to arbitrary vector bundles, the Levi-Civita connection on the tangent bundle of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold, which gives a standard way to differentiate vector fields. Nonlinear connections generalize this concept to bundles whose fibers are not necessarily linear. Linear connections are also called Koszul connections after Jean-Louis Koszu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
