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In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. ... By definition, all manifolds are topological manifolds ...
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.
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.
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.
For instance, an affine connection, the most elementary type of connection, gives a means for parallel transport of tangent vectors on a manifold from one point to another along a curve. An affine connection is typically given in the form of a covariant derivative , which gives a means for taking directional derivatives of vector fields ...
A Seifert surface of a knot is however a manifold with boundary, the boundary being the knot, i.e. homeomorphic to the unit circle. The genus of such a surface is defined to be the genus of the two-manifold, which is obtained by gluing the unit disk along the boundary.
In mathematics, specifically geometry and topology, the classification of manifolds is a basic question, about which much is known, and many open questions remain.