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Concept
Uniformization theorem
Summary
In mathematics, the uniformization theorem says that every simply connected Riemann surface is conformally equivalent to one of three Riemann surfaces: the open unit disk, the complex plane, or the Riemann sphere. The theorem is a generalization of the Riemann mapping theorem from simply connected open subsets of the plane to arbitrary simply connected Riemann surfaces.
Since every Riemann surface has a universal cover which is a simply connected Riemann surface, the uniformization theorem leads to a classification of Riemann surfaces into three types: those that have the Riemann sphere as universal cover ("elliptic"), those with the plane as universal cover ("parabolic") and those with the unit disk as universal cover ("hyperbolic"). It further follows that every Riemann surface admits a Riemannian metric of constant curvature, where the curvature can be taken to be 1 in the elliptic, 0 in the parabolic and -1 in the hyperbolic case.
The uniformization theorem also yields a similar classification of closed orientable Riemannian 2-manifolds into elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic cases. Each such manifold has a conformally equivalent Riemannian metric with constant curvature, where the curvature can be taken to be 1 in the elliptic, 0 in the parabolic and -1 in the hyperbolic case.
Felix and Henri conjectured the uniformization theorem for (the Riemann surfaces of) algebraic curves. extended this to arbitrary multivalued analytic functions and gave informal arguments in its favor. The first rigorous proofs of the general uniformization theorem were given by and . Paul Koebe later gave several more proofs and generalizations. The history is described in ; a complete account of uniformization up to the 1907 papers of Koebe and Poincaré is given with detailed proofs in (the Bourbaki-type pseudonym of the group of fifteen mathematicians who jointly produced this publication).
Official source
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