Riemannian submanifold

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A Riemannian submanifoldN of a Riemannian manifold M is a submanifold of M equipped with the Riemannian metric inherited from M. The image of an isometric immersion is a Riemannian submanifold. [1]

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In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold or Riemannian space(M, g), so called after the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, is a real, smooth manifold M equipped with a positive-definite inner product gp on the tangent space TpM at each point p.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riemannian geometry</span> Branch of differential geometry

Riemannian geometry is the branch of differential geometry that studies Riemannian manifolds, defined as smooth manifolds with a Riemannian metric. This gives, in particular, local notions of angle, length of curves, surface area and volume. From those, some other global quantities can be derived by integrating local contributions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pseudo-Riemannian manifold</span> Differentiable manifold with nondegenerate metric tensor

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 requirement of positive-definiteness is relaxed.

In mathematics, the Chern theorem states that the Euler–Poincaré characteristic of a closed even-dimensional Riemannian manifold is equal to the integral of a certain polynomial of its curvature form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contact geometry</span>

In mathematics, contact geometry is the study of a geometric structure on smooth manifolds given by a hyperplane distribution in the tangent bundle satisfying a condition called 'complete non-integrability'. Equivalently, such a distribution may be given as the kernel of a differential one-form, and the non-integrability condition translates into a maximal non-degeneracy condition on the form. These conditions are opposite to two equivalent conditions for 'complete integrability' of a hyperplane distribution, i.e. that it be tangent to a codimension one foliation on the manifold, whose equivalence is the content of the Frobenius theorem.

In Riemannian geometry, the geodesic curvature of a curve measures how far the curve is from being a geodesic. For example, for 1D curves on a 2D surface embedded in 3D space, it is the curvature of the curve projected onto the surface's tangent plane. More generally, in a given manifold , the geodesic curvature is just the usual curvature of . However, when the curve is restricted to lie on a submanifold of , geodesic curvature refers to the curvature of in and it is different in general from the curvature of in the ambient manifold . The (ambient) curvature of depends on two factors: the curvature of the submanifold in the direction of , which depends only on the direction of the curve, and the curvature of seen in , which is a second order quantity. The relation between these is . In particular geodesics on have zero geodesic curvature, so that , which explains why they appear to be curved in ambient space whenever the submanifold is.

This is a glossary of some terms used in Riemannian geometry and metric geometry — it doesn't cover the terminology of differential topology.

This is a glossary of terms specific to differential geometry and differential topology. The following three glossaries are closely related:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geometric analysis</span> Field of higher mathematics

Geometric analysis is a mathematical discipline where tools from differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs), are used to establish new results in differential geometry and differential topology. The use of linear elliptic PDEs dates at least as far back as Hodge theory. More recently, it refers largely to the use of nonlinear partial differential equations to study geometric and topological properties of spaces, such as submanifolds of Euclidean space, Riemannian manifolds, and symplectic manifolds. This approach dates back to the work by Tibor Radó and Jesse Douglas on minimal surfaces, John Forbes Nash Jr. on isometric embeddings of Riemannian manifolds into Euclidean space, work by Louis Nirenberg on the Minkowski problem and the Weyl problem, and work by Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov and Aleksei Pogorelov on convex hypersurfaces. In the 1980s fundamental contributions by Karen Uhlenbeck, Clifford Taubes, Shing-Tung Yau, Richard Schoen, and Richard Hamilton launched a particularly exciting and productive era of geometric analysis that continues to this day. A celebrated achievement was the solution to the Poincaré conjecture by Grigori Perelman, completing a program initiated and largely carried out by Richard Hamilton.

In mathematics, comparison theorems are theorems whose statement involves comparisons between various mathematical objects of the same type, and often occur in fields such as calculus, differential equations and Riemannian geometry.

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In Riemannian geometry, the Cheeger isoperimetric constant of a compact Riemannian manifold M is a positive real number h(M) defined in terms of the minimal area of a hypersurface that divides M into two disjoint pieces. In 1970, Jeff Cheeger proved an inequality that related the first nontrivial eigenvalue of the Laplace–Beltrami operator on M to h(M). This proved to be a very influential idea in Riemannian geometry and global analysis and inspired an analogous theory for graphs.

In the mathematical field of Riemannian geometry, every submanifold of a Riemannian manifold has a surface area. The first variation of area formula is a fundamental computation for how this quantity is affected by the deformation of the submanifold. The fundamental quantity is to do with the mean curvature.

In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a calibrated manifold is a Riemannian manifold (M,g) of dimension n equipped with a differential p-formφ (for some 0 ≤ pn) which is a calibration, meaning that:

In mathematics, a polar action is a proper and isometric action of a Lie group G on a complete Riemannian manifold M for which there exists a complete submanifold Σ that meets all the orbits and meets them always orthogonally; such a submanifold is called a section. A section is necessarily totally geodesic. If the sections of a polar action are flat with respect to the induced metric, then the action is called hyperpolar.

In mathematics, a web permits an intrinsic characterization in terms of Riemannian geometry of the additive separation of variables in the Hamilton–Jacobi equation.

In mathematics, the Almgren–Pitts min-max theory is an analogue of Morse theory for hypersurfaces.

In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a biharmonic map is a map between Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian manifolds which satisfies a certain fourth-order partial differential equation. A biharmonic submanifold refers to an embedding or immersion into a Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian manifold which is a biharmonic map when the domain is equipped with its induced metric. The problem of understanding biharmonic maps was posed by James Eells and Luc Lemaire in 1983. The study of harmonic maps, of which the study of biharmonic maps is an outgrowth, had been an active field of study for the previous twenty years. A simple case of biharmonic maps is given by biharmonic functions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bang-Yen Chen</span> Taiwanese American mathematician (born 1943)

Chen Bang-yen is a Taiwanese mathematician who works mainly on differential geometry and related subjects. He was a University Distinguished Professor of Michigan State University from 1990 to 2012. After 2012 he became University Distinguished professor emeritus.

David Allen Hoffman is an American mathematician whose research concerns differential geometry. He is an adjunct professor at Stanford University. In 1985, together with William Meeks, he proved that Costa's surface was embedded. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society since 2018, for "contributions to differential geometry, particularly minimal surface theory, and for pioneering the use of computer graphics as an aid to research." He was awarded the Chauvenet Prize in 1990 for his expository article "The Computer-Aided Discovery of New Embedded Minimal Surfaces". He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1971 under the supervision of Robert Osserman.

References

  1. Chen, Bang-Yen (1973). Geometry of Submanifolds. New York: Mercel Dekker. p. 298. ISBN   0-8247-6075-1.