On a

Lorentzian manifold In differential geometry, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold, also called a semi-Riemannian manifold, is a differentiable manifold with a metric tensor that is everywhere nondegenerate. This is a generalization of a Riemannian manifold in which the ...

, certain curves are distinguished as timelike. A timelike homotopy between two timelike curves is a

homotopy In topology, a branch of mathematics, two continuous functions from one topological space to another are called homotopic (from grc, ὁμός "same, similar" and "place") if one can be "continuously deformed" into the other, such a defor ...

such that each intermediate curve is timelike. No

closed timelike curve In mathematical physics, a closed timelike curve (CTC) is a world line in a Lorentzian manifold, of a material particle in spacetime, that is "closed", returning to its starting point. This possibility was first discovered by Willem Jacob van St ...

(CTC) on a Lorentzian manifold is timelike homotopic to a point (that is, null timelike homotopic); such a manifold is therefore said to be multiply connected by timelike curves (or timelike multiply connected). A manifold such as the

3-sphere In mathematics, a 3-sphere is a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere. It may be embedded in 4-dimensional Euclidean space as the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point. Analogous to how the boundary of a ball in three dimens ...

can be

simply connected In topology, a topological space is called simply connected (or 1-connected, or 1-simply connected) if it is path-connected and every path between two points can be continuously transformed (intuitively for embedded spaces, staying within the spa ...

(by any type of curve), and at the same time be timelike multiply connected. Equivalence classes of timelike homotopic curves define their own fundamental group, as noted by Smith (1967). A smooth topological feature which prevents a CTC from being deformed to a point may be called a timelike topological feature.

References

* * Algebraic topology Homotopy theory Lorentzian manifolds {{topology-stub