Differential Geometry
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY MARC BURGER STEPHAN TORNIER Abstract. These are notes of the course Differential Geometry I held at ETH Zurich in 2015. Disclaimer. This is a preliminary version. Please report any typos, mistakes, comments etc. to [email protected]. Acknowledgements. Thanks to those who pointed out typos and mistakes as these notes were written, in particular J. Allemann, H. Benner, P. Gantner, A. Hauswirth, S. Imfeld, C. Macho, P. Poklukar and H. Wu. Contents Introduction................................... 1 1. Differential Manifolds and Differentiable Maps . ..... 2 2. Tangent spaces, Differential and Whitney’s Embedding Theorem .. 21 3. Differential Forms and Integration on Manifolds . ..... 31 4. DeRhamCohomology ........................... 54 5. DeRham’sTheorem ............................ 65 References .................................... 71 Introduction Differential geometry is a synthesis of three different subjects: Analysis in Rn, topology and multilinear algebra. It precisely defines a class of “spaces” on which one can do analysis, termed differential manifolds. These spaces as well as the associated notion of differentiable functions are the central concept of this course. Differential manifolds look locally like Rn but are globally much less boring. Examples are the sphere as well as surfaces with holes: Sphere Torus Surface with two holes An example of what we mean by “do analysis” is the following: If D is a region in R2 contoured by a curve σ : [0, 1] R2 and L,M : R2 R are reasonably smooth functions, then by Green’s formula:→ → ∂M ∂L L(x, y) dx + M(x, y) dy = dx dy. ∂x − ∂y Ic ZZD Note that whereas the left-hand side of the equation only takes into account the values of L and M on c it yet remembers something about D, namely the right-hand side. Green’s formula, the divergence theorem and other well-known formulas are Date: June 3, 2016. 1 2 MARCBURGERSTEPHANTORNIER all incarnations of Stokes’ Theorem which is best understood in the framework of manifolds. In this context we will have to make precise what object makes sense to be integrated over a manifold: differential forms. Stokes’ Theorem will also be used to define invariants that can e.g. tell the above surfaces apart in the sense that one cannot be deformed into the other without tearing it apart. Differential geometry forms a basis for many other subjects. Clearly Riemannian geometry is one of them. However, so are Lie groups and physics. The relationship between differential geometry in algebraic geometry is a special one. In a way, notions of one of the two fields echo in the other. For instance, highly abstract algebraic geometric concepts are often easier to visualize in differential geometry. References for this course include Boothby’s [Boo03] which is readable by stu- dents, Barden’s and Thomas’ [BT03] which will in particular be used for differential forms and Milnor’s classic [Mil97] on which our section on Brouwer’s fixed theorem will be based. 1. Differential Manifolds and Differentiable Maps 1.1. Differential Manifolds: Definitions and Examples. Differential mani- folds were first studied by Riemann in 1854 and later on by Poincaré. However, they were still thinking about manifolds being imbedded in some euclidean space and lacked a precise definition. Nevertheless, Stokes’ theorem and notions like cur- vature were already around. The first precise definition, however, was given in 1913 by Weyl at ETH, see [RW13]. 1.2. Differential Manifolds: Definitions and Examples. The first step to- wards defining differential manifolds is to introduce topological manifolds. Definition 1.1. An n-dimensional topological manifold is a topological space which is (i) Hausdorff (T2), (ii) second countable, and (iii) locally homeomorphic to Rn. Clearly, the last condition of 1.1 is the crucial one. Recall that a topological space X is Hausdorff if for every pair of points x, y X with x = y there are open sets U, V X containing x and y respectively such∈ that U V 6 = . Moreover, X is second⊆ countable if it its topology admits a countable basis∩ =∅ U n N , B { n | ∈ } i.e. any open set U X can be written as U = Un. Eventually, X is locally ⊆ Un⊆U homeomorphic to Rn if every point in M admits an open neighbourhood which is n S homeomorphic to an open subset of R . We are going to discuss many examples and non-examples of differential mani- folds. Therefore our list of examples and non-examples of topological manifolds is rather short. Example 1.2. (i) Let M be a countable discrete space. Then M is a zero-dimensional topo- logical manifold. The converse is true as well. However, the classification of n-dimensional manifolds is much harder in larger n. (ii) The circle S1 R2 with the induced topology is clearly a topological mani- fold of dimension⊆ one. Every point p admits a neighbourhood that is home- omorphic to an interval: b p DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY 3 (iii) The real line R is a one-dimensional topological manifold as well. This is tautological. If one restricts oneself to connected, one-dimensional topological manifolds then S1 and R are in fact the only examples up to homeomorphism. (iv) In dimension two, the situation is already so rich that it defies any reason- able classification. Examples are, as before, the family of surfaces with g holes (g N0): These surfaces are all compact and connected and in fact a classification∈ of compact, connected, two-dimensional topological mani- folds is managable. To this end we will later on introduce the notion of orientability to distinguish between orientable examples as above and non- orientable examples like projective space. To get an idea of the wealth of general (connected) two-dimensional topological manifolds, note that the complement in R2 of a Cantor set is an example. Non-Example 1.3. (i) Consider M := [0, 1] R with the induced topology. Every interior point of M satisfies the third⊂ requirement of the definition of a topological man- ifold for n = 1 but the points 0, 1 M do not. For instance, a typical neighbourhood of 0 M is given by∈U = [0,ε) for some 0 <ε< 1. Sup- pose ϕ : U V ∈R is a homeomorphism onto an open subset V of R. Note U 0 →is connected,⊆ but V ϕ(0) is not. This contradicts ϕ being continuous.\{ } \{ } (ii) The set M := [0, 1]2 is not a (two-dimensional) topological manifold either. Here one may argue using the fundamental group instead of connectedness. Both non-examples above are manifolds with boundary though, as defined later. (iii) Let M = Q R with the induced topology. Then every open set of Q is countable and⊂ hence cannot be in bijection with an open subset of any Rn. Remark 1.4. In order to show that the dimension of a topological manifold is well-defined one has to show that if U Rn and V Rm are non-empty and homeomorphic then n = m. If n =1 or m⊆=1 one may⊆ argue in the above fashion using connectedness. The other cases require e.g. some basic homology theory. If, however, one asks for U and V to be C1-diffeomorphic then basic linear algebra applied to the derivative readily implies n = m. This argument is going to apply in the context of differential manifolds. The next definition constitutes the next important step towards the definition of differential manifolds. Definition 1.5. Let M be an n-dimensional topological manifold. A chart on M is a pair (U, ϕ) consisting of an open subset U M and a homoeomorphism ϕ : U ϕ(U) =: V Rn. The subset U is the coordinate⊆ neighbourhood and V is the coordinate→ space.⊆ We are now going to examine the case in which two charts intersect, see below. 4 MARCBURGERSTEPHANTORNIER Uα Uβ ϕα ϕβ ϕα(Uα) θβα ϕβ(Uβ) θαβ The maps θ := ϕ (ϕ )−1 : ϕ (U U ) ϕ (U U ), βα β ◦ α|Uα∩Uβ α α ∩ β → β α ∩ β θ := ϕ (ϕ )−1 : ϕ (U U ) ϕ (U U ), αβ α ◦ β |Uβ ∩Uα β α ∩ β → α α ∩ β are coordinate transformations or change of charts. They are homeomorphisms n −1 between open subsets of R as θβα = θαβ. Definition 1.6. Let M be a topological manifold. A C0-atlas on M is a collection of charts = (U , ϕ ) chart on M α A such that AU = M. A { α α | ∈ } α∈A α Note that our definition perfectly resembles real-life atlaS ses, introduced by Mer- cator in 1585. By Definition 1.1, every topological manifold admits a C0-atlas. As a next step towards the definition of differential manifolds we now introduce smooth atlases. Definition 1.7. Let be a C0-atlas. Then is a Ck-atlas if all coordinate trans- formations betweenA members of are Ck-maps.A A C∞-atlas is smooth. A Recall that a map f : U Rm from an open subset U Rn to Rm given by x (f (x),...,f (x)) where→f := π f for all i 1,...,m⊆ is Ck if all partial 7→ 1 m i i ◦ ∈{ } derivatives of fi (i 1,...,m ) up to order k exist and are continuous. Also, note that in a Ck-atlas all∈{ coordinate} transformations are in fact Ck-diffeomorphisms by the above, in contrast to the fact that there is a smooth homeomorphism f : R R which is not a diffeomorphism, for instance f : x x3. In particular, this→ map cannot occur as a coordinate transformation in any7→ smooth atlas. Example 1.8. We now give examples of topological manifolds with smooth atlases. (i) Let M := U be an open subset of Rn and = (U, id) .