Scribd
Upload
15 views

Lecture Simplicialcomplexes3

1. Manifolds are topological spaces that resemble Euclidean space at each point. To be a manifold, each point must have a neighborhood homeomorphic to an open ball. Manifolds can be orientable or non-orientable. 2. The orientation of a simplex is an ordering of its vertices allowing even permutations. A simplicial complex is orientable if adjacent simplices have consistent orientations. The Euler characteristic is a topological invariant equal to the alternating sum of the number of simplices. 3. For orientable 2D manifolds, the Euler characteristic uniquely determines the topological type as the sphere, torus, double torus, etc. Non-orientable 2D manifolds are classified as project

Uploaded by

mobius
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
15 views

Lecture Simplicialcomplexes3

1. Manifolds are topological spaces that resemble Euclidean space at each point. To be a manifold, each point must have a neighborhood homeomorphic to an open ball. Manifolds can be orientable or non-orientable. 2. The orientation of a simplex is an ordering of its vertices allowing even permutations. A simplicial complex is orientable if adjacent simplices have consistent orientations. The Euler characteristic is a topological invariant equal to the alternating sum of the number of simplices. 3. For orientable 2D manifolds, the Euler characteristic uniquely determines the topological type as the sphere, torus, double torus, etc. Non-orientable 2D manifolds are classified as project

Uploaded by

mobius
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

1 Topological Properties (17 March) a face), or has an (n − 1)-dimensional face with three

or more n-dimensional simplices adjacent to it, then this


The previous two lectures we defined and gave examples space is not a manifold. For example, the following topo-
of simplicial complexes. In this lecture, we will look at logical spaces are not manifolds:
two invariants of a topological space, specifically: the ori-
entation and the Euler characteristic.

Manifolds. A (geometric) n-manifold M ⊆ Rd (for


some d ≥ n) is a closed topological space that resem-
bles Euclidean space at each point. Specifically, that
means that each x ∈ M has a neighborhood Nx ⊂ M
that is homeomorphic to (read: resembles) an open n-ball
Bn := {x ⊂ Rn ||x| < 1}. [Note: A closed space is a
space that contains all of its limit/accumulation points.]
Getting into the definition of homeomorphism is be- Note: there is a special group of non-manifolds known
yond the scope of this lecture, so we will define it via as manifolds with boundary. These occur if we have a
examples, so that you have an intuition for what it is. Re- manifold and remove an open disc from it.
calling tangent lines and planes from calculus class, we
remember that a tangent at a point is the line (or plane) Orientation. When we say that a manifold is orientable,
that looks close enough to the (smooth) surface/function that means there is a consistent way of defining up. For
when you zoom in far enough. For this reason, the plane example, the surface of the earth is orientable. At every
Rd as well as the graph any smooth function over Rd : point on the earth, we can ask: in which direction is the
sky? And, all answers will be locally consistent. A möbius
band, however, is not orientable, as a point x can have two
different notions of up.

Formally, the orientation of a simplex is an ordering of


Allowing for the tangent ball above to be a “topological the vertices up to even permutations. The phrase up to
tangent” as opposed to a geometric one, we allow the tan- even permutations means that two permutations are con-
gent to bend and change shape, as long as we do not take sidered equivalent if they differ by an even number of two-
scissors or glue to the ball. For example, the following element swaps.
spaces are also manifolds:
For example, if we have a triangle t = {abc}, then
the permutations abc, bca, and cab all represent the same
orientation, and cba, acb, and bac all represent a differ-
ent orientation. Geometrically, this translates to using the
right hand rule to determine the orientation of a simplex.
Whether we obtain the orientation abc or cba depends on
whether we are looking at the front or the back of the sim-
plex. A simplex has exactly two orientations, and we often
refer to one as the positive (+1) orientation and the other
as the negative (−1) orientation.
In a simplicial complex, we say that two adjacent sim-
When a space is punctured (a hole added interior to plices are consistently ordered if the common face is ori-

1
ented in opposite directions in each simplex. For example, Euler Characteristic. Given a planar embedded
the following triangles are consistently oriented: graph G with v vertices and e edges, let f be the
number of pieces the plane is cut into when we remove
(cut-along) G. The Euler characteristic of the graph is
then: χ(G) = v − e + f . We noticed that χ(G) = 2
always. This is actually a specific example of the Euler
characteristic of the sphere. A graph is planar if and only
if it can be embedded on the surface of a sphere. No
matter how you embed it on the sphere (or on the plane),
the number of faces the embedding creates will always be
the same.
We say that an n-dimensional simplicial complex is ori- Now consider a simplicial complex K. Let Ki be the
entable if all pairs of adjacent n-simplices are consistent. set of i-simplices in K. Then, the Euler characteristic of
This definition goes hand-in-hand with algorithm to test K is defined as:
if a simplex is orientable or not. Letting K be a k- ∞
X
dimensional simplicial complex (of a manifold) with k +1 χ(K) := (−1)i |Ki |.
n-simplices. The algorithm to decide if K is orientable is i=0
as follows: If we use colloquial language, we see that the Euler char-
acteristic is equal to the number of vertices minus the num-
1. Choose a simplex σ ∈ K. ber of edges plus the number of faces minus the number
2. Let τ1 , . . . , τk be the DFS ordering of the n-faces of tetrahedra plus the number of 4-simplices, etc.
from σ.
The Euler characteristic is a topological invariant. This
3. Choose an arbitrary orientation for σ. means, if we have the same underlying space, the Euler
4. S = {σ}. characteristic will always be the same, no matter how we
triangulate it.
5. For each i = 1 . . . k: If τi has a unique consistent
orientation given the orientations of all simplices in
S, orient τi and set S = S ∪ {τi }. Else, return false. Manifold Classification.
6. For each edge: If the the incident triangles are not
consistently oriented, return false. C LASSIFICATION T HEOREM. Given an orientable
7. return true (as we have constructed a consistent ori- compact manifold, the Euler characteristic is sufficient to
entation). uniquely determine the topological type of the manifold:
the sphere S2 , the torus T2 , the double torus T2 #T2 , the
[Exercise: This is done essentially with two sweeps: doing connected sum of three tori T2 #T2 #T2 , etc.
the DFS and then going through the edges. In fact, we can
actually do this in one sweep. Do you see how?] The connected sum A#B is obtained by removing an
open disc from both A and B, then gluing them together
We consider the (orientable) cylinder and the (non- along the boundaries of the removed discs. This operation
orientable) Möbius strip. Below, we triangulate the fun- is one type of surgery in topology.
damental polygons for each, and attempt to choose an ori-
entation for each triangle, starting with the starred triangle.

In fact, all non-orientable two-manifolds can also be


classified by their Euler characteristic. A non-orientable
two-manifold is either a projective plane P2 or the con-
nected sum of projective planes P2 # · · · #P2 .

2
Handle-body Decomposition. Note: the handle-body
decomposition was not explicitly discussed in class, but
it might be helpful to understand for Question 4 of the
homework.
The torus T2 can be obtained by starting with a sphere,
removing two holes, and connecting the holes using a
cylinder. This cylinder we call a handle. We can repeat
this process to add n handles, we obtain the connected
sum of n tori.

Summary. Given two simplicial complexes K1 and K2 ,


it is often very difficult to determine if K1 = K2 , or if
K1 is topologically equivalent to K2 . Instead, we choose
a set or properties to describe K1 and K2 . If these prop-
erties are topological invariants, then we can prove that
K1 6= K2 by finding a property that witnesses a difference
between them (for example, perhaps K1 is orientable and
K2 is not). More often than not, we do not even need to
fully understand exactly what the complex K1 represents,
we may just be interested in the properties themselves: de-
termining whether K1 is connected may be sufficient for
some applications.

You might also like