parent:: inculcation

initial philosophy of manifolds

Philosophy of manifolds I: to go out of open sets in

After studying submanifolds of , or just surfaces in , why do we want to think of arbitary sets as “manifolds”, as something we can do things we could do to smooth surfaces? Because then anything could be a manifolds.

Well not anything, but many sets can be attached with a smooth manifold structures. For example, (which is a group or a set of functions really!), spacetime in physics, . This helps us do analysis in more kinds of spaces, and generalise geometry equipped with differentiation.

architecture of manifolds

Sadly, the definition and introductory theory of manifolds is “complete garbage” 1

Architecture of manifolds I

We obtain a set attached with coordinates.

hence manifolds generalize coordinate systems

motivation for the technologies

There are three motivations for the definitions and ideas

  • Analysis and geometry in the submanifolds of or surfaces in
  • Analysis in normed vector spaces
  • Topology, algebraic topology

There are some absurdity in the definitions of objects which are very simple in the case of normed vector spaces

technologyin normed vector space in smooth manifold
tangent vectors(not essential) velocity of curves in passing though some are just vectors in multiple ways to define it
tangent space(not essential) itself because any is a velocity of some curve
tangent bundle(not essential) disjoint union of for all elements of , hence
tangent vector fieldsa smooth function a smooth function such that is mapped to a vector in (called a smooth section of )
dual (tangent) space
-(tangent) tensor space
tensor bundle(not essential)
-exterior (tangent) vectors
differential -forma smooth function
integration of differential forms on chains

a first course just to construct the theory :(

tangents

differential forms

bundles on smooth manifolds

beyond the first course and uses

  • (semi)Riemannian geometry, GR
  • Differential topology
    • Morse theory
    • Cobordism theory
  • Knots
  • Geometric classical mechanics (classical mechanics done right)
    • Lagrangian dynamics
    • Symplectic geometry and Hamiltonian dynamics
  • Geometric classical field theory
  • Gauge theory
  • Geometric quantum mechanics
    • quantization (classical mechanics quantum mechanics, proper)
  • Smooth dynamical systems: vector fields on manifolds can give us ODEs Inculcation: ODEs

Footnotes

  1. evan-chen-napkin, chapter 45