Geometry And Topology Of Manifolds

This book represents a novel approach to differential topology. Its main focus is to give a comprehensive introduction to the classification of manifolds, with special attention paid to the case of surfaces, for which the book provides a complete classification from many points of view: topological, smooth, constant curvature, complex, and conformal. Each chapter briefly revisits basic results usually known to graduate students from an alternative perspective, focusing on surfaces. We provide full proofs of some remarkable results that sometimes are missed in basic courses (e.g., the construction of triangulations on surfaces, the classification of surfaces, the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the degree-genus formula for complex plane curves, the existence of constant curvature metrics on conformal surfaces), and we give hints to questions about higher dimensional manifolds. Many examples and remarks are scattered through the book. Each chapter ends with an exhaustive collection of problems and a list of topics for further study. The book is primarily addressed to graduate students who did take standard introductory courses on algebraic topology, differential and Riemannian geometry, or algebraic geometry, but have not seen their deep interconnections, which permeate a modern approach to geometry and topology of manifolds.

Manifolds play an important role in topology, geometry, complex analysis, algebra, and classical mechanics. Learning manifolds differs from most other introductory mathematics in that the subject matter is often completely unfamiliar. This introduction guides readers by explaining the roles manifolds play in diverse branches of mathematics and physics. The book begins with the basics of general topology and gently moves to manifolds, the fundamental group, and covering spaces.

This book grew out of a graduate course on 3-manifolds and is intended for a mathematically experienced audience that is new to low-dimensional topology. The exposition begins with the definition of a manifold, explores possible additional structures on manifolds, discusses the classification of surfaces, introduces key foundational results for 3-manifolds, and provides an overview of knot theory. It then continues with more specialized topics by briefly considering triangulations of 3-manifolds, normal surface theory, and Heegaard splittings. The book finishes with a discussion of topics relevant to viewing 3-manifolds via the curve complex. With about 250 figures and more than 200 exercises, this book can serve as an excellent overview and starting point for the study of 3-manifolds.

This book contains expository papers that give an up-to-date account of recent developments and open problems in the geometry and topology of manifolds, along with several research articles that present new results appearing in published form for the first time. The unifying theme is the problem of understanding manifolds in low dimensions, notably in dimensions three and four, and the techniques include algebraic topology, surgery theory, Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten gauge theory,Heegaard Floer homology, contact and symplectic geometry, and Gromov-Witten invariants. The articles collected for this volume were contributed by participants of the Conference "Geometry and Topology of Manifolds" held at McMaster University on May 14-18, 2004 and are representative of the manyexcellent talks delivered at the conference.

Geometric topology may roughly be described as the branch of the topology of manifolds which deals with questions of the existence of homeomorphisms. Only in fairly recent years has this sort of topology achieved a sufficiently high development to be given a name, but its beginnings are easy to identify. The first classic result was the SchOnflies theorem (1910), which asserts that every 1-sphere in the plane is the boundary of a 2-cell. In the next few decades, the most notable affirmative results were the "Schonflies theorem" for polyhedral 2-spheres in space, proved by J. W. Alexander [Ad, and the triangulation theorem for 2-manifolds, proved by T. Rad6 [Rd. But the most striking results of the 1920s were negative. In 1921 Louis Antoine [A ] published an extraordinary paper in which he 4 showed that a variety of plausible conjectures in the topology of 3-space were false. Thus, a (topological) Cantor set in 3-space need not have a simply connected complement; therefore a Cantor set can be imbedded in 3-space in at least two essentially different ways; a topological 2-sphere in 3-space need not be the boundary of a 3-cell; given two disjoint 2-spheres in 3-space, there is not necessarily any third 2-sphere which separates them from one another in 3-space; and so on and on. The well-known "horned sphere" of Alexander [A ] appeared soon thereafter.

Manifolds, the higher-dimensional analogs of smooth curves and surfaces, are fundamental objects in modern mathematics. Combining aspects of algebra, topology, and analysis, manifolds have also been applied to classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum field theory. In this streamlined introduction to the subject, the theory of manifolds is presented with the aim of helping the reader achieve a rapid mastery of the essential topics. By the end of the book the reader should be able to compute, at least for simple spaces, one of the most basic topological invariants of a manifold, its de Rham cohomology. Along the way, the reader acquires the knowledge and skills necessary for further study of geometry and topology. The requisite point-set topology is included in an appendix of twenty pages; other appendices review facts from real analysis and linear algebra. Hints and solutions are provided to many of the exercises and problems. This work may be used as the text for a one-semester graduate or advanced undergraduate course, as well as by students engaged in self-study. Requiring only minimal undergraduate prerequisites, 'Introduction to Manifolds' is also an excellent foundation for Springer's GTM 82, 'Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology'.

This book provides an introduction to topology, differential topology, and differential geometry. It is based on manuscripts refined through use in a variety of lecture courses. The first chapter covers elementary results and concepts from point-set topology. An exception is the Jordan Curve Theorem, which is proved for polygonal paths and is intended to give students a first glimpse into the nature of deeper topological problems. The second chapter of the book introduces manifolds and Lie groups, and examines a wide assortment of examples. Further discussion explores tangent bundles, vector bundles, differentials, vector fields, and Lie brackets of vector fields. This discussion is deepened and expanded in the third chapter, which introduces the de Rham cohomology and the oriented integral and gives proofs of the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem, the Jordan-Brouwer Separation Theorem, and Stokes's integral formula. The fourth and final chapter is devoted to the fundamentals of differential geometry and traces the development of ideas from curves to submanifolds of Euclidean spaces. Along the way, the book discusses connections and curvature--the central concepts of differential geometry. The discussion culminates with the Gauß equations and the version of Gauß's theorema egregium for submanifolds of arbitrary dimension and codimension. This book is primarily aimed at advanced undergraduates in mathematics and physics and is intended as the template for a one- or two-semester bachelor's course.

This book offers an introductory course in algebraic topology. Starting with general topology, it discusses differentiable manifolds, cohomology, products and duality, the fundamental group, homology theory, and homotopy theory. From the reviews: "An interesting and original graduate text in topology and geometry...a good lecturer can use this text to create a fine course....A beginning graduate student can use this text to learn a great deal of mathematics."—-MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS