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In mathematics, the tangent space of a manifold is a generalization of tangent lines to curves in two-dimensional space and tangent planes to surfaces in three-dimensional space in higher dimensions. In the context of physics the tangent space to a manifold at a point can be viewed as the space of possible velocities for a particle moving on ...
A tangent bundle is the collection of all of the tangent spaces for all points on a manifold, structured in a way that it forms a new manifold itself. Formally, in differential geometry , the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold M {\displaystyle M} is a manifold T M {\displaystyle TM} which assembles all the tangent vectors in M ...
Given an n-dimensional smooth manifold M, and a point p ∈ M, a contact element of M with contact point p is an (n − 1)-dimensional linear subspace of the tangent space to M at p. [2] [3] A contact element can be given by the kernel of a linear function on the tangent space to M at p.
In Euclidean space, all tangent spaces are canonically identified with each other via translation, so it is easy to move vectors from one tangent space to another. Parallel transport is a way of moving vectors from one tangent space to another along a curve in the setting of a general Riemannian manifold. Given a fixed connection, there is a ...
One is often interested only in C p-manifolds modeled on spaces in a fixed category A, and the category of such manifolds is denoted Man p (A). Similarly, the category of C p-manifolds modeled on a fixed space E is denoted Man p (E). One may also speak of the category of smooth manifolds, Man ∞, or the category of analytic manifolds, Man ω.
Intuitively, development captures the notion that if x t is a curve in M, then the affine tangent space at x 0 may be rolled along the curve. As it does so, the marked point of contact between the tangent space and the manifold traces out a curve C t in this affine space: the development of x t. In formal terms, let τ 0
In mathematics, a tangent vector is a vector that is tangent to a curve or surface at a given point. Tangent vectors are described in the differential geometry of curves in the context of curves in R n. More generally, tangent vectors are elements of a tangent space of a differentiable manifold. Tangent vectors can also be described in terms of ...
An almost symplectic manifold is a differentiable manifold equipped with a smoothly varying non-degenerate skew-symmetric bilinear form on each tangent space, i.e., a nondegenerate 2-form ω, called the symplectic form. A symplectic manifold is an almost symplectic manifold for which the symplectic form ω is closed: dω = 0.