Concept
H-cobordism
Related concepts (16)
Piecewise linear manifold
In mathematics, a piecewise linear (PL) manifold is a topological manifold together with a piecewise linear structure on it. Such a structure can be defined by means of an atlas, such that one can pass from chart to chart in it by piecewise linear functions. This is slightly stronger than the topological notion of a triangulation. An isomorphism of PL manifolds is called a PL homeomorphism.
Simon Donaldson
Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson (born 20 August 1957) is an English mathematician known for his work on the topology of smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds, Donaldson–Thomas theory, and his contributions to Kähler geometry. He is currently a permanent member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University in New York, and a Professor in Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London. Donaldson's father was an electrical engineer in the physiology department at the University of Cambridge, and his mother earned a science degree there.
Casson handle
In 4-dimensional topology, a branch of mathematics, a Casson handle is a 4-dimensional topological 2-handle constructed by an infinite procedure. They are named for Andrew Casson, who introduced them in about 1973. They were originally called "flexible handles" by Casson himself, and introduced the name "Casson handle" by which they are known today. In that work he showed that Casson handles are topological 2-handles, and used this to classify simply connected compact topological 4-manifolds.
Cobordism
In mathematics, cobordism is a fundamental equivalence relation on the class of compact manifolds of the same dimension, set up using the concept of the boundary (French bord, giving cobordism) of a manifold. Two manifolds of the same dimension are cobordant if their disjoint union is the boundary of a compact manifold one dimension higher. The boundary of an (n + 1)-dimensional manifold W is an n-dimensional manifold ∂W that is closed, i.e., with empty boundary.
Whitney embedding theorem
In mathematics, particularly in differential topology, there are two Whitney embedding theorems, named after Hassler Whitney: The strong Whitney embedding theorem states that any smooth real m-dimensional manifold (required also to be Hausdorff and second-countable) can be smoothly embedded in the real 2m-space, \R^{2m}, if m > 0. This is the best linear bound on the smallest-dimensional Euclidean space that all m-dimensional manifolds embed in, as the real projective spaces of dimension m cannot be embedded into real (2m − 1)-space if m is a power of two (as can be seen from a characteristic class argument, also due to Whitney).
Differential topology
In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with the topological properties and smooth properties of smooth manifolds. In this sense differential topology is distinct from the closely related field of differential geometry, which concerns the geometric properties of smooth manifolds, including notions of size, distance, and rigid shape. By comparison differential topology is concerned with coarser properties, such as the number of holes in a manifold, its homotopy type, or the structure of its diffeomorphism group.