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In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an -dimensional manifold, or -manifold for ...
The study of manifolds combines many important areas of mathematics: it generalizes concepts such as curves and surfaces as well as ideas from linear algebra and topology. Certain special classes of manifolds also have additional algebraic structure; they may behave like groups, for instance. In that case, they are called Lie Groups.
In topology, a topological manifold is a topological space that locally resembles real n-dimensional Euclidean space. Topological manifolds are an important class of topological spaces, with applications throughout mathematics. All manifolds are topological manifolds by definition.
Manifolds in contemporary mathematics come in a number of types. These include: smooth manifolds, which are basic in calculus in several variables, mathematical analysis and differential geometry; piecewise-linear manifolds; topological manifolds. There are also related classes, such as homology manifolds and orbifolds, that resemble manifolds.
In mathematics, particularly topology, an atlas is a concept used to describe a manifold. An atlas consists of individual charts that, roughly speaking, describe individual regions of the manifold. In general, the notion of atlas underlies the formal definition of a manifold and related structures such as vector bundles and other fiber bundles.
In mathematics, specifically geometry and topology, the classification of manifolds is a basic question, about which much is known, and many open questions remain.
In all dimensions, the fundamental group of a manifold is a very important invariant, and determines much of the structure; in dimensions 1, 2 and 3, the possible fundamental groups are restricted, while in dimension 4 and above every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of a manifold (note that it is sufficient to show this for 4- and 5-dimensional manifolds, and then to take ...
In mathematics, an algebraic manifold is an algebraic variety which is also a manifold. As such, algebraic manifolds are a generalisation of the concept of smooth curves and surfaces defined by polynomials. An example is the sphere, which can be defined as the zero set of the polynomial x 2 + y 2 + z 2 – 1, and hence is an algebraic variety.