Related Research Articles
William Paul Thurston was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds.
In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed versions of the complex plane: locally near every point they look like patches of the complex plane, but the global topology can be quite different. For example, they can look like a sphere or a torus or several sheets glued together.
In mathematics, Thurston's geometrization conjecture states that each of certain three-dimensional topological spaces has a unique geometric structure that can be associated with it. It is an analogue of the uniformization theorem for two-dimensional surfaces, which states that every simply connected Riemann surface can be given one of three geometries . In three dimensions, it is not always possible to assign a single geometry to a whole topological space. Instead, the geometrization conjecture states that every closed 3-manifold can be decomposed in a canonical way into pieces that each have one of eight types of geometric structure. The conjecture was proposed by William Thurston (1982), and implies several other conjectures, such as the Poincaré conjecture and Thurston's elliptization conjecture.
In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is replaced with:
In mathematics, hyperbolic space of dimension n is the unique simply connected, n-dimensional Riemannian manifold of constant sectional curvature equal to -1. It is homogeneous, and satisfies the stronger property of being a symmetric space. There are many ways to construct it as an open subset of with an explicitly written Riemannian metric; such constructions are referred to as models. Hyperbolic 2-space, H2, which was the first instance studied, is also called the hyperbolic plane.
In mathematics, a prime geodesic on a hyperbolic surface is a primitive closed geodesic, i.e. a geodesic which is a closed curve that traces out its image exactly once. Such geodesics are called prime geodesics because, among other things, they obey an asymptotic distribution law similar to the prime number theorem.
In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot theory, and braid groups. This can be regarded as a part of geometric topology. It may also be used to refer to the study of topological spaces of dimension 1, though this is more typically considered part of continuum theory.
In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a space that locally looks like Euclidean 3-dimensional space. A 3-manifold can be thought of as a possible shape of the universe. Just as a sphere looks like a plane to a small enough observer, all 3-manifolds look like our universe does to a small enough observer. This is made more precise in the definition below.
In mathematics, more precisely in topology and differential geometry, a hyperbolic 3–manifold is a manifold of dimension 3 equipped with a hyperbolic metric, that is a Riemannian metric which has all its sectional curvatures equal to -1. It is generally required that this metric be also complete: in this case the manifold can be realised as a quotient of the 3-dimensional hyperbolic space by a discrete group of isometries.
In mathematics, Thurston's classification theorem characterizes homeomorphisms of a compact orientable surface. William Thurston's theorem completes the work initiated by Jakob Nielsen (1944).
In mathematics, the Teichmüller space of a (real) topological surface , is a space that parametrizes complex structures on up to the action of homeomorphisms that are isotopic to the identity homeomorphism. Teichmüller spaces are named after Oswald Teichmüller.
Steven Paul Kerckhoff is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, who works on hyperbolic 3-manifolds and Teichmüller spaces.
In mathematics, a pair of pants is a surface which is homeomorphic to the three-holed sphere. The name comes from considering one of the removed disks as the waist and the two others as the cuffs of a pair of pants.
The Nielsen realization problem is a question asked by Jakob Nielsen about whether finite subgroups of mapping class groups can act on surfaces, that was answered positively by Steven Kerckhoff.
In differential geometry, the Margulis lemma is a result about discrete subgroups of isometries of a non-positively curved Riemannian manifold. Roughly, it states that within a fixed radius, usually called the Margulis constant, the structure of the orbits of such a group cannot be too complicated. More precisely, within this radius around a point all points in its orbit are in fact in the orbit of a nilpotent subgroup.
In topology, a branch of mathematics, a lamination is a :
In hyperbolic geometry, the ending lamination theorem, originally conjectured by William Thurston (1982), states that hyperbolic 3-manifolds with finitely generated fundamental groups are determined by their topology together with certain "end invariants", which are geodesic laminations on some surfaces in the boundary of the manifold.
In geometry, a pleated surface is roughly a surface that may have simple folds but is not crumpled in more complicated ways. More precisely, a pleated surface is an isometry from a complete hyperbolic surface S to a hyperbolic 3-fold such that every point of S is in the interior of a geodesic that is mapped to a geodesic. They were introduced by Thurston, where they were called uncrumpled surfaces.
In mathematics, the Thurston boundary of Teichmüller space of a surface is obtained as the boundary of its closure in the projective space of functionals on simple closed curves on the surface. The Thurston boundary can be interpreted as the space of projective measured foliations on the surface.
Francis Bonahon is a French mathematician, specializing in low-dimensional topology.
References
- Kerckhoff, Steven P. (1983), "The Nielsen realization problem", Annals of Mathematics , Second Series, 117 (2): 235–265, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.353.3593 , doi:10.2307/2007076, ISSN 0003-486X, JSTOR 2007076, MR 0690845
- Travaux de Thurston sur les surfaces, Astérisque, vol. 66, Paris: Société Mathématique de France, 1979, ISBN 978-99920-1-230-7, MR 0568308
- Thurston, William P. (1986), "Earthquakes in two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry", in D.B.A. Epstein (ed.), Low dimensional topology and Kleinian groups, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-33905-6