Topology in the context of "Felix Hausdorff"

Terrain (from Latin terra 'earth'), alternatively relief or topographical relief, is the dimension and shape of a given surface of a land. In physical geography, terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientation of terrain features. Terrain affects surface water flow and distribution. Over a large area, it can affect weather and climate patterns. Bathymetry is the study of underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level.

In geometry, a disk (also spelled disc) is the region in a plane bounded by a circle. A disk is said to be closed if it contains the circle that constitutes its boundary, and open if it does not.

For a radius ${\displaystyle r}$, an open disk is usually denoted as ${\displaystyle D_{r}}$, and a closed disk is ${\displaystyle {\overline {D_{r}}}}$. However in the field of topology the closed disk is usually denoted as ${\displaystyle D^{2}}$, while the open disk is ${\displaystyle \operatorname {int} D^{2}}$.

In mathematics, a surface is a mathematical model of the common concept of a surface. It is a generalization of a plane, but, unlike a plane, it may be curved (this is analogous to a curve generalizing a straight line). An example of a non-flat surface is the sphere.

There are several more precise definitions, depending on the context and the mathematical tools that are used for the study. The simplest mathematical surfaces are planes and spheres in the Euclidean 3-space. Typically, in algebraic geometry, a surface may cross itself (and may have other singularities), while, in topology and differential geometry, it may not.

A cylinder (from Ancient Greek κύλινδρος (kúlindros) 'roller, tumbler') has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.

A cylinder may also be defined as an infinite curvilinear surface in various modern branches of geometry and topology. The shift in the basic meaning—solid versus surface (as in a solid ball versus sphere surface)—has created some ambiguity with terminology. The two concepts may be distinguished by referring to solid cylinders and cylindrical surfaces. In the literature the unadorned term "cylinder" could refer to either of these or to an even more specialized object, the right circular cylinder.

In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. Thus, an algebraic surface is a solution of a set of polynomial equations, in which there are two independent directions at every point. An example of an algebraic surface is the sphere, which is determined by the single polynomial equation ${\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}=1.}$ Studying the intrinsic geometry of algebraic surfaces is a central topic in algebraic geometry. The theory is much more complicated than for algebraic curves (one-dimensional cases), and was developed substantially by the Italian school of algebraic geometry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.It remains an active field of research.

In the simplest cases, algebraic surfaces are studied as algebraic varieties over the complex numbers. For example, the familiar sphere (for real ${\displaystyle x,y,z}$), becomes a complex (affine) quadric surface, which simultaneously incorporates the sphere and hyperboloids of one and two sheets, and this allows some complications (such as the topology: whether the surface is connected, or simply connected) to be deferred somewhat. Higher degree surfaces include, for example, the Kummer surface. The classification of algebraic surfaces is much more intricate than the classification of algebraic curves, which have dimension one, and is already quite complicated.

Continuity is one of the core concepts of calculus and mathematical analysis, where arguments and values of functions are real and complex numbers. The concept has been generalized to functions between metric spaces and between topological spaces. The latter are the most general continuous functions, and their definition is the basis of topology.

Peter Guthrie Tait FRSE (28 April 1831 – 4 July 1901) was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Lord Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory.

His work on knot theory contributed to the eventual formation of topology as a mathematical discipline. His name is known in graph theory mainly for Tait's conjecture on cubic graphs. He is also one of the namesakes of the Tait–Kneser theorem on osculating circles.

Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which uses abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, to solve geometrical problems. Classically, it studies zeros of multivariate polynomials; the modern approach generalizes this in a few different aspects.

The fundamental objects of study in algebraic geometry are algebraic varieties, which are geometric manifestations of solutions of systems of polynomial equations. Examples of the most studied classes of algebraic varieties are lines, circles, parabolas, ellipses, hyperbolas, cubic curves like elliptic curves, and quartic curves like lemniscates and Cassini ovals. These are plane algebraic curves. A point of the plane lies on an algebraic curve if its coordinates satisfy a given polynomial equation. Basic questions involve the study of points of special interest like singular points, inflection points and points at infinity. More advanced questions involve the topology of the curve and the relationship between curves defined by different equations.

In topology and related branches of mathematics, a connected space is a topological space that cannot be represented as the union of two or more disjoint non-empty open subsets. Connectedness is one of the principal topological properties that distinguish topological spaces.

Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics, such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He also introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory. Euler has been called a "universal genius" who "was fully equipped with almost unlimited powers of imagination, intellectual gifts and extraordinary memory". He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia.

Euler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter ${\displaystyle \pi }$ (lowercase pi) to denote the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, as well as first using the notation ${\displaystyle f(x)}$ for the value of a function, the letter ${\displaystyle i}$ to express the imaginary unit ${\displaystyle {\sqrt {-1}}}$, the Greek letter ${\displaystyle \Sigma }$ (capital sigma) to express summations, the Greek letter ${\displaystyle \Delta }$ (capital delta) for finite differences, and lowercase letters to represent the sides of a triangle while representing the angles as capital letters. He gave the current definition of the constant ${\displaystyle e}$, the base of the natural logarithm, now known as Euler's number. Euler made contributions to applied mathematics and engineering, such as his study of ships, which helped navigation; his three volumes on optics, which contributed to the design of microscopes and telescopes; and his studies of beam bending and column critical loads.

In topology and related areas of mathematics, a neighbourhood (or neighborhood) is one of the basic concepts in a topological space. It is closely related to the concepts of open set and interior. Intuitively speaking, a neighbourhood of a point is a set of points containing that point where one can move some amount in any direction away from that point without leaving the set.

In mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect at a single point, but there are some pairs of lines (namely, parallel lines) that do not intersect. A projective plane can be thought of as an ordinary plane equipped with additional "points at infinity" where parallel lines intersect. Thus any two distinct lines in a projective plane intersect at exactly one point.

Renaissance artists, in developing the techniques of drawing in perspective, laid the groundwork for this mathematical topic. The archetypical example is the real projective plane, also known as the extended Euclidean plane. This example, in slightly different guises, is important in algebraic geometry, topology and projective geometry where it may be denoted variously by PG(2, R), RP, or P₂(R), among other notations. There are many other projective planes, both infinite, such as the complex projective plane, and finite, such as the Fano plane.

Brouwer's fixed-point theorem is a fixed-point theorem in topology, named after L. E. J. (Bertus) Brouwer. It states that for any continuous function ${\displaystyle f}$ mapping a nonempty compact convex set to itself, there is a point ${\displaystyle x_{0}}$ such that ${\displaystyle f(x_{0})=x_{0}}$. The simplest forms of Brouwer's theorem are for continuous functions ${\displaystyle f}$ from a closed interval ${\displaystyle I}$ in the real numbers to itself or from a closed disk ${\displaystyle D}$ to itself. A more general form than the latter is for continuous functions from a nonempty convex compact subset ${\displaystyle K}$ of Euclidean space to itself.

Among hundreds of fixed-point theorems, Brouwer's is particularly well known, due in part to its use across numerous fields of mathematics. In its original field, this result is one of the key theorems characterizing the topology of Euclidean spaces, along with the Jordan curve theorem, the hairy ball theorem, the invariance of dimension and the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. This gives it a place among the fundamental theorems of topology. The theorem is also used for proving deep results about differential equations and is covered in most introductory courses on differential geometry. It appears in unlikely fields such as game theory. In economics, Brouwer's fixed-point theorem and its extension, the Kakutani fixed-point theorem, play a central role in the proof of existence of general equilibrium in market economies as developed in the 1950s by economics Nobel prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu.

In mathematics, especially in geometry and topology, an ambient space is the space surrounding a mathematical object along with the object itself. For example, a 1-dimensional line ${\displaystyle (l)}$ may be studied in isolation —in which case the ambient space of ${\displaystyle l}$ is ${\displaystyle l}$, or it may be studied as an object embedded in 2-dimensional Euclidean space ${\displaystyle (\mathbb {R} ^{2})}$—in which case the ambient space of ${\displaystyle l}$ is ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}}$, or as an object embedded in 2-dimensional hyperbolic space ${\displaystyle (\mathbb {H} ^{2})}$—in which case the ambient space of ${\displaystyle l}$ is ${\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}}$. To see why this makes a difference, consider the statement "Parallel lines never intersect." This is true if the ambient space is ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}}$, but false if the ambient space is ${\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}}$, because the geometric properties of ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}}$ are different from the geometric properties of ${\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}}$. All spaces are subsets of their ambient space.

In physical cosmology, the shape of the universe refers to both its local and global geometry. Local geometry is defined primarily by its curvature, while the global geometry is characterised by its topology (which itself is constrained by curvature). General relativity explains how spatial curvature (local geometry) is constrained by gravity. The global topology of the universe cannot be deduced from measurements of curvature inferred from observations within the family of homogeneous general relativistic models alone, due to the existence of locally indistinguishable spaces with varying global topological characteristics. For example; a multiply connected space like a 3 torus has everywhere zero curvature but is finite in extent, whereas a flat simply connected space is infinite in extent (such as Euclidean space).

Current observational evidence (WMAP, BOOMERanG, and Planck for example) imply that the observable universe is spatially flat to within a 0.4% margin of error of the curvature density parameter with an unknown global topology. It is currently unknown whether the universe is simply connected like euclidean space or multiply connected like a torus.

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 (a Kleinian group).

Hyperbolic 3-manifolds of finite volume have a particular importance in 3-dimensional topology as follows from Thurston's geometrisation conjecture proved by Perelman. The study of Kleinian groups is also an important topic in geometric group theory.